Hearthstone

Anybody know if we will be able to get the Stormwind Tavern pass with gold?

Am I the only one who dislikes that T5 released these so early into the meta and has not bothered to update them, despite the fact most of them have been nerfed and do not see any competitive play? How many of them could you realistically keep a positive wr with anyways? It just seems kind of dishonest that these are being described as meta when only the paladin, priest, and warrior decks are.

My usual favorite has been The Thunder King since saying, "You serve well " followed by "Kneel before me!" has an awesome sexual undertone I hope my opponents pick up on during the many times I shout it in a game.

Lately it's been Annhylde. Her "Rise to meet your fate" threat is so perfect to spam the rest of the game when you have them at low life. The way she says it is just priceless.

I was hearing some complaints, when the latest nerfs were announced, that Shaman need to be hit. I rolled my eyes, thinking the class had just spent a year or so in the toilet, and as soon as they have any success, people need to cry for nerfs. I hadn't really played it much lately, since my previous control shaman deck that I found fun got rotated out of existence. 

Then I received the Fire Festival quest to play ten (10!!!) games as a shaman, so I figured, ok, the elemental thing seems ok, i'll throw a bunch in a deck with some spells and see how it goes. So I did that, without consulting the sites - my deck has no weapons, but I managed to squeeze in Instructor Fireheart, Al'Akir the Windlord, and Bru'kan, because I like legendaries. I also put in that elemental that summons a minion off of your highest cost spell, but only put in one high cost spell (Tidal Wave), which I usually draw before the elemental, haha. Janky, for sure.

Played my 10 games. Went 10-0. Maybe people were right. . . 

Greetings, everyone! I'm back with some new content. Today, I'm presenting you my version of Boss Batle Royale, which is one of my all time favorite Tavern Brawl series, to the point I made a guide on the first edition back on Hearthpwn (lost in ether though). It actually includes heroes from TEN different PvE content, each of different class. Unlike previous iterations, I've decided to create the decks myself to explore potential possibilities and to avoid having some decks being near unplayable - looking at you, Kriziki the Winged!

List of Bosses

A new Rare Warlock Spell, Touch of the Nathrezim, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about United in Stormwind

Head on over to our dedicated guide for United in Stormwind!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

I know what you are thinking right now "Doesn't that happen every Expansion?" and the answer is actually no. The mode has been in "Season 1: Wizzard Duels" since its release. Your memories might mix something up with the "rating reset" coundtown which let to the "Season 1 mid-Season" update in January.

I havn't found any evidence on a Saison update for the Barrens expansion on the Internet. Only that there was a nameless big content update

Season 1 came with 10 heroes with 1 HP and starting Treasure each aswell as a bunch of passive and active Treasures for the runs. I expect something similar with the potential "Mercenary Duels" in Season 2.

Funfact: Since it said "Next Season in 1 > Month" two Months ago I looked up this screen every time after they patch the game and today it was finally worth it.

Since some of you are very easily discouraged, I have cooked up a functioning Control Priest list that can hold the line against aggro decks and still play the long game. Use it. Learn it. And don't complain when you lose to Hunter because you failed to manage your ressources accordingly.

Deck ID Not Found

It's not gonna be a tier 1 deck (as it shouldn't be anyways) but I'd be very surprised if you couldn't take this to Legend in the current meta (which I can't prove unfortunately because I'm already there).

Just play super safe into both Shaman and Demon Hunter and always except them to have the best cards in every situation because if you don't they will blindside you and you die.

Title says it all. I am honestly baffled how this was allowed to slip through. Not even Choices, Choices + Swarm 67 or Agression 122 are as strong, they look like Innkeeper's decks comapred to this Quel'delar monstrosity.

I was playing some ranked just now and hit the next reward tier in Standard Ladder. As I was mindlessly clicking to progress the animations I thought something looked a little bit different about the rewards graphic. I went in to check and sure enough, the packs displayed for the month end reward look like they are going to be United in Stormwind card packs. I don't know if this was already noticed and announced, but it made some of my decisions a little easier. I was contemplating not logging in after July 31 until the expansion had launched to see if I could force it to be the new packs. Now I don't have to wait. I really think that is a nice move on Blizzard's part to make it so that we can get the new packs like that.

As an aside, I've also been saving my packs from the rewards track, tavern brawls, and Book of Heroes/Mercenaries to open with the new expansion. I've got 30+ of those to go as well.

I greet you! Are you waiting for the United in Stormwind reveals to start and are getting bored due to the 3 weeks cooldown? Then I have something to entertain you while you're waiting. I was working on my first custom class before I got to the second expansion of the Year of the Wolf, my custom Hearthsotne year,  and now it's the time to show it, and I present to you now my first custom class: The Shapeshifter! 

The Shapeshifter

The Shapeshifters, as the name suggests, are the masters of form manipulation, and can turn anyone, anything and themselves into ANYTHING! Unlike Druids who can only transform themselves into Beasts, or Shamans who can only transform people into frogs.
The hero representing this class is know as Nayda Darklight, an Archshapeshifter capable of shaping anything to her liking. Her real name or form is unknown, since she keeps changing her apperence, but all we trully know about her is her ultimate goal: Become an Old God. And if enough interest is shown on the class, i'll write her full story in the form of Book of Heroes.
An now let's get to the important part, the strengths, weaknesses and themes of the class.

Strenghts

• Tempo - Shapeshifters have access to pretty powerful tempo tools, they do everything in their reach to conquer the board soon and never lose it.
• Single target removal - When a Shapeshifter transforms into someone, they don't want its friends to discover they are an impostor, so they kill their targets as swift and clean as possible, finishing the job in a single blow.
• Versatility - Since they can assume many forms, Shapeshifters can adapt to any situation. If they need to be aggressive to win, they get aggressive, if they need to control the situation, they control it. And thanks to that trait, they can even overcome their weaknesses sometimes.
• Disruption - Messing with their opponent's mind is one of the main tools of the shapeshifter, sometimes they don't even need to fight their enemies, just confuse and annoy them enough until they lose the will to fight.

Limitations

• Card draw - Shapeshifters can turn everything in their reach as a resource, but when there's nothing nearby, they just can't do anything about it;.
• Survivability - Shapeshifters has very feel access to healing, but they can use a bit of Armor and Taunt minions to reach the late game, and they do so by using some very special cards that I'll show in a minute.
• Burst/ Damaging Spells - Finishing minions are one the strengths of the Shapeshifters, but killing heroes are another story, since their access to damaging spells is very imitated, they finish their opponent's with late game Charge minions.
• Swarms and Big minions - Shapeshifters usually must transform their minions into big monsters to put pressure, that's why sometimes they must swarm the board to always have a target, but they can't use the little minions to finish the game with mass buffs like Druids. They also have access to big minions who can't be easily removed, but since survivability is not their main strengths, using that strategy might be too risky to try.
• Buffs - Shapeshifters have access to some buffs, but they rather transform minions instead of buffing them, that's why their buffs are limitated to a few Handbuffs and Keyword Buffs (Give Rush, Taunt, Lifesteal, etc).

Weaknesess

• Card Generation - Getting stuff out of nowhere like Mages is impossible for Shapeshifters. They must use their own resources and surroundings to fight their enemies.
• AoE - dealing mass damage or mass buffs is not a shifter's thing, they rather deal with one minion at a time.

Keyword, Class Mechanics and Themes

Morph - Do something after a minion transforms (emphasis on AFTER here).

Costless Cards - Cards that costs around 4.5 Mana who can only played when another weaker card puts a cost on it. Since card generation is one of the main weakness of the class, they won't get those cards out of nowhere and end up with a useless card in hand, they must build their deck around those cards in order to use them properly.

Shapeless cards - Cards who will change their form each turn, like Shifter Zerus, Molten Blade or Shifting Scroll, except that Shapeless cards turns into specific and mechanical cards, Example: Transform into a card that restores Health, that draw cards, that can be played right away, etc. Also, they don't count as a Costless card in order to make the Costless archetype consistent.

Forms - Temporary Hero cards who only lasts until you lose your Armor. Unlike the usual hero card, they are not legendaries, so you can put many in your deck and even stack forms to make them last longer. Note: I kinda of forget Shadow Form was a card when I was creating them, so ignore this little detail, ok? Note2: Also ignore the little Dragon on the top right, they are not legendaries, but Hearthcards doesn't have a Dragonless template for Hero Cards.

Faceless, Dragons and Worgens - What those three have in common? They're all shapeshifters! So they will be featured a lot in the class, both mechanically and flavourly.

Basic Set

Shapeshifter's Initiate set

Since hero cards were introduced in Knights of the Frozen Throne, and the first expansion of a year after it was The Witchwood, the Shapeshifter's initiate Set would be launched along side The Witchwood expansion, already featuring Rush and Forms (Who're basically hero cards).

Show Spoiler

The Witchwood

A mechanic not well explored in the witchwood was the worgen mechanic, cards that would switch their attack and health at the end of the turn, and since transformation are the main thing of the shapeshifter, this will be their main theme, and remember, this is the set the class is supposed to be lauched, so you can expect some OP cards in this expansion and the whole Year of the Raven in general, just like Blizzard did with Demon Hunter.

Show Spoiler

The Boomsday Project

And now in boomsday, Bioengeneer Shululu is using his minions as subjects of mutation, using his main creation, The X Factor. What horrible things is he doing to his minions? Find out. 

Show Spoiler

Rastakhan's Rumble

In Rastakhan's Rumble, the troll champion is Makumba, a specialist in changing the form of other beings, and he is here representing Kith'ix, a faceless who one was worshiped as a Loa, but when the true came out, most trolls stopped worshiping him, except for a few who now master the shifting arts.

Show Spoiler

Rise of Shadows

In the Dalaran's assault, Shapeshifters are helping defending the city, everyone is suspicious towards their help, but protecting the city is more important now. A mysterious Archmage called Torvic standed against the league of EVIL, but his powers were not enough, and he fell in battle. After the assault, Torvic's body mysteriously disappeared, what could have happened?

Show Spoiler

Saviours of Uldum

During the fight against the Plague Lords, the League of Explorers founded a man searching for a relic called the Titanic Forge, his name was Victor Blackrock, a half Shapeshifter half Warlock who got tired of fighting and became an explorer. Victor helped the league through the temples of Uldum, and managed to find Tekhan, but failed to stop him and died before the explorer's arrived. After the steal of the Plague of Undeath by Rafaam, Victor's body disappeared.

Show Spoiler

Descent of Dragons

Turns out, both Torvic and Victor Blackrock was actually Nefarian! who was helping the League of Evil the whole time, hurting Khadgar from behind and locating the exact location of the plague of Undeath, who was used to resurrect Galakrond, the Shady. Nefarian also did everything in his reach to delay and sabotage the explorers, the perfect infiltrator. So shapeshifter's are the first class to feature in both the good and bad side in the Year of the Dragon.

Galakrond's Awakening

On the Galakrond's Awakening mini-set, Shapeshifters will get all EVIL tools from Dalaran and Uldum, now that Nefarian's is openlly working with the League of Evil, bringing his Scheme's, plagues and Lackeys to stop the explorers and awake Galakrond.

Show Spoiler

Ashes of Outland

Here in Outland, shapreshifters are doing their best to adapt to the aggressive enviroment, and they do so by transforming into big Taunt minions and disruption effects to slow their enemies.

Show Spoiler

Scholomance Academy

In Scholomance, Shapeshifters are partnering up with Druids and Shamans. With Druids, they'll learn to master their versatility in battle and improve their Beast forms with the help of the shiting theacher Mon'ark, and with Shamans, they'll practicing the evolutionary arts with teacher Cogu'mel by evolving their minions, and they'll all be wacthed by Mr.Bigglesworth, who belive it or not, is actually a gnome shapeshifter.

Madness at the Darkmoon Faire

Corruption is runing loose in the Faire, transforming its victims into tentacled monsters. Maybe Nayda will manage to achieve her goal here? Probably yes, but the only way to know for sure is by getting corrupted, so enter the faire and embrace the corruption!

Core Set 2021

Show Spoiler

Forged in the Barrens

In the Barrens, a Shapeshifter is infiltrated in the horde territory, with the mission to investigate the Shards of light, and bring the information back to the Alliance. His name is Wurleen Dustclaw, and with the help of the other infiltrators, he shall accomplish his mission.

Bonus

There's not a shitload of Bonus content like last time, but I might update that section later, for now, I'll just post some hero skins.

And that is it, I hope you've enjoyed this random brainstorm of mine who turned into a class, most sets were very easy to make, but some others were hard as fuck and took more than half of the development phrase, wich lasted 2 months or so. I don't plan to update this class with every expansion (since I'm working on another project), but if there's enough interested, I'll keep updating it with each expansion (But not the ones before The Witchwood). I might look like a politician with all those promises, but free time is short and there's another project of mine in the way as I said before. And for last, feel free to share your oppinions, I would really appreciate it since this is my first custom class, all suggestions and critics will be noted, that is all for now, take care and bye.

Competition Theme: Ride And Die

It's time to saddle up your trusty steed and charge into battle with them!

• You must create a spell which buffs a minion and summons another minion when that minion dies
  • Damn that's a mouthful - it's Mounts, guys, like Elekk Mount or Spikeridged Steed

Sinti is looking for the very best mounts this week - make sure you trained yours well!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Jul 12 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Jul 17 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jul 17 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Jul 18 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jul 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Jul 19 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

Do we know when the expansion will be launched / reveal will start?

Competition Theme: Tools Of The Trade

We're looking for professional cards this week, so get smithing!

• You must create a 0-Attack weapon with a passive effect
  • We're obviously inspired by the new expansion here, but Sphere of Sapience is an earlier example
• Your weapon should lose Durability in some way besides attacking with it
  
  • We don't want your weapon sitting around all game - these tools aren't indestructible!

FenrirWulf is looking to celebrate the new expansion announcement in this week's competition, so let's get crafty!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Jul 5 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Jul 10 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jul 10 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Jul 11 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jul 11 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Jul 12 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

I don't remember hearing this anywhere so I'm curious if anyone knows.  When you use the tradeable effect does the card draw a random card and then shuffle into your deck, or is it placed on the bottom of the deck?  It doesn't really specify on the HS website either, just saying "Cards with the Tradeable keyword can be played like normal, or traded with a random card in your deck for the low price of 1 Mana.".  Thought that maybe it literally trades places with a card in your deck at random instead of shuffling, which if so could be interesting with Lorekeeper Polkelt in the game...  But likely not since I think the game doesn't predetermine deck order and just picks a card at random to be the card you draw (unless you've played Polkelt).

So has anyone seen a Twitter post, or some other clarification out there from a dev?  Since it doesn't specify that it goes to the bottom of the deck I'm going to assume it shuffles in, as the HS team's attitude on text the last 2-3 years has shifted to not always clarifying unless the effect does something different than expected.

A new Common Neutral Minion, Spice Bread Baker, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about United in Stormwind

Head on over to our dedicated guide for United in Stormwind!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

A new Common Neutral Minion, Spice Bread Baker, has been revealed!

Discuss

Finding out the next pre-order hero skin will be Lady Katrana Prestor (aka Onyxia) for mage ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back, making me write a pretty salty comment about being annoyed it wasn't a rogue hero. Now, I'm the first to admit it is barely even a first world problem that the jpeg Blizz puts in a bundle isn't the one I wanted, and I wouldn't normally publicise my saltiness, so why did I care enough to do so this time?

There are a whole bunch of contributing factors that on their own wouldn't even be worth mentioning, but they nevertheless summed to one salty rogue main, so let's set them all out to see what really happened here.

* Note when I use the word 'devs' I don't mean the whole HS team, but only whoever has influence on the cosmetics.

An inexplicable imbalance

Anticipation for nothing

Wrapping up

So yes, it is the most minor thing that has no real impact when I'm actually playing the game. But I think my very last sentence contains the real heart of the problem: even if it is very unlikely Blizzard actually planned to screw rogue over with this, the fact it is beginning to look intentional is a real problem for players who have been waiting for a non-Valeera rogue hero for 4 years. It's eroding trust in the devs in a way that is just so silly and avoidable. And despite what it first looks like, it's not the frustrated rogue players who are being silly here because they actually have got the short end of the stick. No, it's the devs who could have simply commissioned a different bit of art at any time in those 4 years. No one would have been the slightest bit upset if Lady Prestor was Mathias Shaw instead, or if we never got Horseman Uther or Firefang Rexxar, so why keep avoiding rogue heroes?

The extension to this is that if we get a trio of Scabbs portraits in the Rewards Track, it won't really remedy the problem because it will look a lot like every class was going to get a trio of mercenary portraits this year anyway. You don't placate someone who's annoyed they have less than everyone else by giving everyone a treat.

So yeah, it is all a super minor psychological issue, but also so easily avoided that I'm still wagging a grumpy finger at Blizz and blaming them for needlessly creating it in the first place.

A new Legendary Warlock Spell, The Demon Seed, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about United in Stormwind

Head on over to our dedicated guide for United in Stormwind!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

A new Legendary Mage Spell, Sorcerer's Gambit, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about United in Stormwind

Head on over to our dedicated guide for United in Stormwind!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.