Called it. 🙂

I agree with Yakucho: you can’t bemoan the loss of Shudderwock until you at least see what new cards are coming to replace it. I remember in the last days of Year of the Raven rogue seemed like it was on its last legs–it was basically Quest Rogue or nothing–and then RoS came out and tempo rogue was the most popular deck on standard ladder within a week.

I could see Pocket Galaxy reverting from 7 to 5–as Stonekeep says, Wild is faster than Standard so I can’t see it being viable otherwise.

Dr. Boom and Raiding Party make sense too–they were both heavy-handed nerfs to course-correct the Standard meta and should be fine if not necessary for wild.

For the YoD card: I actually think Sludge Slurper because again it was a heavy-handed nerf and it was a corner stone for a lot of archetypes (quest, murloc, overload).

I don’t play Overwatch.
How long are the queues for the less popular modes in that game? That would be my biggest concern. Right now queues for every game mode are usually < 1 minute for every game mode, but if they start adding too many unique game modes I could see this shoot up.

I don’t know that I’d want it as a full-time game mode, but I would DEFINITELY like to see this brawl occur more often. Infinitely better than the “Randy McRandomness” and “Make a broken deck out of expensive wild cards” brawls we’ve been getting lately.

I imagine its going to play out a lot like the inverse of Murlocs: it has a weak start (due to small population) and weak late game, but it has a nice power spike mid-game. I could see a lot of players try to start with another tribe, transition to this shortly after reaching Tier 2 when they roll dragons instead of what they wanted for Plan A, then stick with dragons until after Tier 4 when they start trying to either get a Razorgore off a triple or prep for another transition to say Brann + Murlocs for late game.

It’s interesting to me that they add in 18 new minions but only remove 10–and that those 10 are almost entirely the bottom of the proverbial barrel. I had thought they were going to rotate out a tribe instead of just increasing. I guess we’ll see what happens. 😛

I’m actually glad there are cards like Spirit of the Shark and Battle Rage that actually weaker than they feel. The meta for Hearthstone has enough sameness as-is; there should be “traps” and “baits” to encourage some variation and experimentation.

King Phaoris in 2020? Amazing!

>>(although knowing the flight costs, I’m not exactly sure if that’s enough to cover the costs for people
>>who already booked them)
It’s probably not, but that’s still possibly as much as $75k that Blizzard is proactively contributing on top of what I’m sure was a very expensive and labor-intensive relocation process so I’d consider it fairly generous.

I don’t know about pushing Watcher out to Tier 4; would have much rather seen the Wrath Weaver pushed to Tier 2. Maybe it could swap spots with Pogo Hopper. 🙂

I will tell you why I haven’t enjoyed it:
* Story-wise, it feels like its crawling. You do 3 fights, get a few cutscenes which try to escalate the tension, and then… wait until next week for more. I actually skipped playing last week just so I could play it back-to-back with this week’s.
* The rewards feel pitiful: they all seem like “pack-filler”, even the legendary shaman weapon and quest pirate. Maybe they are better than they seem, but coming off the power spike that was DoD I think I would have actually preferred DoD packs to these. When I bought this I justified it by telling myself it was at worst a good dust-to-dollar ratio, but honestly now I kinda wish I had my $20 back.
* The matches themselves are entirely forgettable. I still remember chess and Netherspite’s portals from Karazhan, the trap room and deck-swap from Explorers, Maexxna sapping my minions in Naxx… I played Chapters 1 & 2 less than a month ago, and the only game I remembered was playing as Talritha, and that’s just because it struck with me how lame it was that my opponent was constantly abusing my hero power to buff her minions.

Druids are the only class that got a neat new toy. Speaking for myself: I’ve been doing the minimum to clear dailies and spending the rest of my free time in the Runeterra beta.

I got Rising Wings last night off a discover while playing my Elise/Nomi Quest Druid deck (please don’t judge–I was completing a daily!), and it did feel good to be able to draw a little faster while also dropping a little pressure.

Yes, sorry. 🙁

Your ideal comp for Tyrion is divine shield: early-game Righteous Protectors, Spawns, and Selfless Heroes (all Tier 2) followed by rushing to Bolvar, Boogeymonster, Festeroot, Baron, and Zapp. Alternatively you can try a taunt comp using Phalanx, Defender of Argus, and Strongshell, but I think that’s more of a longshot.

Crowd Champ is a bit of a bait: most battlecries are tribal buffs, so you probably aren’t really getting good synergy beyond the original 4/4 body and the +1/+1 each turn. Giving (almost) every minion +1/+1 every turn is good, but you still need some power spike to match your opponents’. You’re right that it’s difficult–technically you have a better chance of hitting triples since your lobby should be mostly avoiding your picks, but you also don’t have the same potential for game-breaking combos as all the tribals do.

Perhaps. Except you still need to have played an elemental the turn before, so now you’re asking for 3 cards.

Compare this against the classic Mountain Giant/Conjurer’s Calling shenanigans, which are a lot more consistent, give you more stats, combo easily with Khadgar, and are still just too inconsistent for this meta. Is this it exactly the same thing? No, if you get the EE you can pull off the former a little sooner, whereas the latter is a little slower but also a little easier to pull off (MG on Turn 4 was fairly common during RoS) and gives you twinspell and possibly taunts. But given that NOONE is still playing the latter, I believe the only way this Animated Avalanche sees play is if someone invents a clever way to synergize this with Cyclone and/or Elemental Allies…and 7 mana just isn’t conducive to either.

I would like this card a lot more if it cost less–then it would synergize better with Cyclone / Elemental Allies decks, which tend to bide their time for one big play and as such could use a nice early board boost. As is, I just don’t see where this card fits–it’s jumping through a lot of hoops to put an extra 7/6 on board. Early game: there aren’t many good elementals at 6 and it feels REALLY bad to pay 7 mana for a single vanilla 7/6, so you’re probably never dropping this on curve. Late game: maybe you drop this as a must-answer threat, but two vanilla 7/6s just aren’t as intimidating as a lot of other late-game threats right now.

/sigh. I really ought to break down and craft those Bloodsworn Mercenaries–they aren’t leaving the meta for the next 15 months.

I predict:
*Galakrond Rogue is going to adopt Shadow Sculpter–just too good with lackeys and coins, and this archetype is already super popular
*Handlock is going to experiment with Twisted Knowledge but the most popular decklist won’t change
*Aggro warrior is going to come back based around Bomb Wrangler, Frothing Berserker, and Bloodsworn
*Not much else will change this week