Does anyone want to hazard a guess at who the good choices are?

All these seem pretty fun. Be careful if you get a Paladin v Paladin matchup, though: my opponent dropped a turn 1 Crystalizer, and our totems chained-pinged us both into a dual loss.

Stonekeep’s post originally said “not a Frostfire”. I assumed it should have instead been “add” (at work and can’t check) because that’s the verb used by cards like Gilded Gargoyle, Holy Water, and Lyra, but I guess Blizzard actually used “put” instead here.

For Malacress, I think you mean “add a Frostfire”.

I wish they would have more brawls like this and less of the RNG-fests. This is so much more fun!!

There are some significant power level discrepancies between the decks, but nothing horrendous. Priest, Rogue, and Paladin are definitely Tier One. Mage, Hunter, and Shaman are Tier Two. Warrior, Druid, and Warlock are viable but only if your opponent doesn’t pop-off–play only if you’re up for a challenge.

I really like and respect Brian Kibler, but that man is always saying something or other is “ruining Hearthstone”. 5 months ago when Quest Rogue was dominating the meta, it was Preparation. Then Giggling Inventor got nerfed and Quest Rogue disappeared, and it became Baku/Genn.

In my opinion, this is part of a larger problem Blizzard is facing in that they make want to make good cards that players will want to use (and therefore buy packs), but they always make some cards so good they become auto-include for most decks. E.g., why not run Vilespine and Elven Minstrel in every rogue deck? Or Psychic Scream and Shadow Visions in every priest deck? Brawl, Execute, Volcano, Void Lords, Zilliax, Lich King, practically every hero card, etc. Unless it’s counterproductive to your particular deck’s win condition, these cards are just too good NOT to include.

They’ve tried mitigating this by coupling certain powerful effects with deck limitations, which is a very creative solution, but players are smart–or at least very well-informed. It quickly becomes abundantly clear when the cards that are worth the additional limitations (Reno, Prince Keleseth, Rhok’delar) and when they’re not (Prince Valanar, Glitter Moth, Prince Taldaram in most cases).

Baku and Genn are just the natural progression of this. I.e., if you’re building a Paladin Control deck, there’s probably not too many odd cards you’d even consider–maybe Zilliax, Stonehill, and Lynessa? Why not trade these in for a 1-mana hero power effective at the beginning of the game? Even if you personally aren’t thinking that, it soon becomes abundantly clear on HsReplay that that deck has a superior winrate.
Sure, you can nerf Genn and make him less appealing, but at the end of the day he’s either still more value or less value than Zilliax + Stonehill + Lynessa combined, and once he’s less value then everyone that follows HsReplay will just drop Genn and add in the latter. Then THOSE become the auto-include cards that everyone complains about. Or if neither side of the equation has a significant winrate on the current meta, then players just start playing other decks that do–re: druid and shaman after their recent respective nerfs.

It won’t directly affect the game as we know it, but there will be some indirect effects to every Blizzard department. I’ll bet everyone on Team 5 use to interact with at least one person that’s no longer employed.

I’ve been on both the “cut” and the “kept” sides of downsizing efforts. Not fun. I’m glad AB is concentrating on long-term sustainability, but I also appreciate that the cost is short-term misery.

Lorenzeub just posted a smart decklist where he uses a Cloning Gallery to cheat out his enforcers.

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/i-will-build-a-wall/

Barring that, you could try a Shadow Essence with the same goal.

As much as I respect the ingenuity behind this deck, I’m REALLY glad this enforcer/inner-fire/rez synergy is only being discovered weeks before the rotation because its not at all fun to play against.

Honestly, the druid deck above is relatively cheap and the only epics are the 2 Branching Paths, which are usually used for card draw rather than armor. If you’re still hesitant, you could try substituting in a card draw of your choice (e.g., loot hoarder, novice engineer, bloodmage, etc) and feel that out before pulling the trigger.

Nothing about Maly Rogue? That’s probably the 2nd most popular rogue deck right now, behind Odd Rogue.

WOW. I’m stunned they are making this many changes to the evergreen sets. In a vacuum, each of these nerfs sound individually justifiable, but taken all together with last month’s nerfs to druid’s evergreen cards plus the fact these cards have been unchanged for almost 5 years at this point really makes me wonder what exactly Team 5 is trying to accomplish here…

No Immortal Prelates? 🙁

I’m curious: with the current system, how long does it take other players to climb from Rank 20 to say 10 or 5?

I’ve never even tried to climb, because some basic math–say assume a 60% win rate and 5 games / hour, that’s a net of +1 star an hour (ignoring streak bonuses) = 5 hours / rank–implied it was an extremely joyless way to spend a week, all just to be awarded slightly more dust at the end of the month.

Another great fun article, Old Guardian–thanks!

In your Genn article, you wrote that all 3 decks were viable but Budget Even Pally had a clear advantage over the others for climbing ladder. My interpretation of this article was that you’re saying all 3 budget odd decks have ladder-climbing potential and are roughly equal. Would you agree with that statement, or would you say there is one odd deck that stood out against the others?

Have you tried Clockwork Automaton in this deck?

It’s actually ~50-60% winrate at Rank 20, which I think is the target audience. And it let’s you try out meme decks that can be fun to try but lose too much to justify crafting (e.g., discard-lock, surrender to madness priest, Gonk druid, etc).

It’s absolutely horrible for quests, though, just because you have no control over which deck you draw.

I’d say a second Dire Frenzy. You’re not going to have the OP infinite value that is DK Rexxar, but its only 40 dust and it will give you a little extra burst of gas which might be enough in some games.

You need to play Silver Vanguard while you have Undatakah in-hand; you just want it to die so that its deathrattle is in your history. Then you play Undatakah, and its battlecry pulls 3 deathrattles from your history–hopefully at least Prelate’s (shuffle a copy of this 8-mana minion into your deck with all enchantments) and Silver Vanguard (recruit an 8-cost minion from your deck). Unless it gets silenced or transformed, the net effect is “resummon this minion with all enchantments, including the deathrattles to resummon itself”.

Most people will also play Sunfury Protector on the same turn as Undatakah to give it taunt, so then it effectively becomes an infinite-health taunt.