Thank you, fixed it!

I don’t think it’s only about rewards – people affected by the bug weren’t able to PLAY Brawl at all. The point is that they were locked out of one of the game modes.

For many, Brawl is just “get a pack and leave”, a free weekly reward. But lots of casual players don’t really play Constructed and mostly play Brawls. I have a friend like that, he plays Brawl nearly exclusively, so he was basically locked out of Hearthstone for an entire week (he couldn’t play the replacement Brawl at all). It turned out fine, because he tested out Battlegrounds instead and liked it, but that’s another story 🙂

Long story short, 300g seems to be more of a compensation for people who were stripped of a basic game functionality – those who were unable to play the mode that others could play throughout the rest of that week after it came back. You, me, and a bunch of other players could just play the game like we normally can, without any extra issues besides a Brawl being delayed by 1 day.

I can see the argument of giving out the compensation to everyone, but the truth is that from a business perspective they want to give 300 gold only for those they really need to (because they already promised) instead of everyone. 300g is a lot, and it can be a difference between someone buying packs with real money or not (because all the freebies they’ve been giving out lately really add up).

Probably. You’ll find out soon.

But you were able to play the next Brawl – most (if not everyone) who got the 1st Brawl bugged were locked out of the 2nd Brawl too and they couldn’t play it for the entire week.

Plus, it’s not like you’re losing anything. I also wasn’t affected by the bug but I don’t mind people getting 300g for free, because why not? It doesn’t cost me anything.

I agree that it would probably be more “fair” to give it out to everyone, but I don’t understand why some seem to be angry when others get something.

Probably late evening / night, but we don’t know the exact time.

I mean, you can play it as a 2 damage for 2 mana… which is terrible. Or you have to put Dragons into your deck, which is not something that Zoo will do probably. And in slower decks, face damage is not that scary.

Not necessarily ranked, just a separate queue where you only play against other players who fight for rewards. But it would either need a smaller buy-in / rewards or play until X wins / loses like Arena.

But like I’ve said, I’m nearly sure that they won’t monetize Battlegrounds entries themselves, because that would make people so mad. The mode will definitely stay F2P. But I do think that there’s a lot of potential to monetize in cosmetics. New emote packs / Hero borders / maybe even board itself (like you could change the way your side of the board looks like during combat – they can even use already existing boards from previous expansions).

But same could be said about regular Hearthstone… In general, I think that they do miss a lot of cosmetic potential. Maybe they will utilize it better with BG.

BG will definitely stay free to play, I’m almost certain. They’ve already said so anyway. It would be a suicide to take the most or 2nd most popular format (I imagine that Standard might still be more popular than Battlegrounds, and it will definitely be after expansion launches) and putting it behind a paywall. People would get angry, stop playing it, they wouldn’t really earn anything.

The only way I can see Arena-like BG happening is adding an option to pay an entry free and then getting better rewards. I wouldn’t mind a separate queue like that. But the main game should stay F2P and I’m nearly sure (of course can never be 100% sure) – they wouldn’t do it to their playerbase after calling it a F2P mode everywhere.

Focusing on rewards doesn’t certainly mean adding more actual, HS-related rewards – like this mode doesn’t have to give you packs etc. But cosmetics should be fun. Both HS cosmetics like card backs, Hero skins, and maybe custom BG cosmetics like new portrait borders etc. that are only available in Battlegrounds.

Rust Buckets (Thijs, Kibler, Amaz, Kolento) won, Mega Fins (Hafu, Dog, Trump, RDU) were close second. They basically battled for the 1st place from the beginning, although other teams also caught up in the end 🙂

You mean stats on the main screen? Or aren’t you getting any rating for the wins?

Yep, they seem to be keeping only 24 Heroes at the same time – when introducing new ones, they remove some of the older ones (mostly strongest & weakest ones).

I’m not sure why, maybe to make balancing them easier. But they have confirmed that those should be rotated back in at one point (possibly with changed Hero Powers to balance them more). Although I have to say that I would like more variety, something like ~40 Heroes so that you won’t see the same ones every run.

And no wonder you had great runs with King Mukla – it was one of the strongest Heroes after the buff 😀

I really don’t think so. Everyone is ignoring the ladder and playing BGs precisely because the current meta is boring and dull, mainly thanks to Evolve builds being 1/3 of it. After new expansion comes, brings new cards, shakes things up, players should get interested in Constructed again. At least for a while – until the next time meta stabilizes and becomes boring.

Which is great IMO and a reason why I would love to see even more modes eventually – when one of them becomes boring, players can just switch to something else instead 🙂

Yeah, and also when the total attack of minions on the opponent’s side is less than 12, so they won’t kill your 12/12. Or at least barely above 12, so your 12/12 will die, but you will at least clear everything (because let’s say if your opponent has 3x 6/6, then it will only hit and kill two of those, then die).

I’m afraid that there is no way to tell what deck will be good in long term. Right now we don’t even know what decks will be good after next expansion launches, let alone next year after Standard rotation.

Some decks like Zoo Warlock, Midrange Hunter, Control Warrior, Tempo Rogue etc. seem to be most consistent – they have been good in many metas in the past, and there’s a solid chance that they will still be viable in the future. However, they way they’re played changes. They do share some key cards (e.g. Tempo Rogue always plays Backstab, Eviscerate, Sap, Edwin etc.), but builds and strategies change from expansion to expansion.

And one more thing – everyone finds different decks fun, so I can’t really give you a “fun” deck – something that’s fun for me might not be fun for you 🙂

Yeah, I’ve seen it, but the in the “leak” a part of the card was covered, so the exact text, stats etc. weren’t confirmed yet. That’s why I didn’t want to post it yet. It should get confirmed soon, maybe even in tomorrow’s patch 🙂

I agree completely – maybe some cards that specifically work on minions without tribes. Something like “Give your every tribeless (or however they would want to call it) minion +2/+2”. Also more synergies for those cards – e.g. going for a Divine Strategy with Bolvar might be fun, but we would need more DS synergies.

3/4 vs 2/2 stats don’t matter in the late game, but I still think it’s a viable nerf. At 3/4, he’s a good tempo pick initially ON TOP of having insane late game. Picking a vanilla 2/2 will put you in a weaker spot immediately, which means that it will be harder to play greedy and let’s say go for a Lightfang strategy, where it’s most useful.

Will it be enough? Hard to say, honestly – probably not. But it’s a bigger nerf than it might seem, because there’s a high chance you will lose next combat or two after picking a vanilla 2/2 from T2 (because it loses to even T1 minions).

On the other hand, I think that moving him to T4 and especially to T5 is way too severe nerf – when you’re already in the late game, you rarely want to pick Amalgam anyway, unless you specifically have a Menagerie setup ready and not all of the tribes covered. I skip like 95% of Amalgams I see in the late game (unless I’m looking for triple). T3 + stats nerf should suffice IMO.

Right now Amalgam is so good, because you can pick him early, it’s good early, and it has amazing late game scaling. I think that making you pick him later (T3) and making his stats weaker so you need to sacrifice more tempo would be enough, he should no longer be an auto-pick then, but still a consideration in certain setups. Or MAYBE T4, but without stats nerf. Possibly even a slight stats buff, like to 4/5, because T4 has a lot of key cards that would compete with him.

Yep, minions going back to pool can be a downside too – if a player who plays a completely different strategy gets kicked out, then the pool gets flooded with a bunch of useless cards 🙂

You should add Prophet Velen.

I don’t think there is – we just had Twitch drops during BlizzCon and then for Battlegrounds.

I just think that this year HGG is just a filler tournament between Grandmasters seasons. No drops, it’s shorter, they don’t really promote it etc.