it was just my experience with the 40+ games i played (sounds much, but most games do not last more than 2-3 turns)

real turn 1 kills by my opponents were quite infrequent (even with specialized decks), because you only have little time in your first turn. That lead to many situations where one player puts himself down on cards and life to almost kill his opponent, and then said opponent only needs to inflict 10-15 damage, but only has little life left to do so. That is why Molten Giant is quite effective in practice, even if it does not help with turn 1 kills.

If you expect to face only Burn Druid and Demon Hunter decks (those are the only ones capable of T1 kills in the hands of a very a quick player) you could call it a turn 1 meta, but even there a dreadlord can help you with its taunt, because much of Druid’s and Demon Hunter’s damage comes from attacks by the hero.

I had bad results with Hand of Gul’dan, because if you pay 6 life for it you often miss the necessary life total to play all the cards drawn, and there is no way besides luckily hitting it with scourge supplies to consistently discard it to play it for free (like expired merchant and chamber of viscidus – those are obviously not an option).

Maybe I play too slow, and maybe the fact that i do not own The Soularium makes such a big difference, but i almost never could do 30 damage on turn 1 with the original deck. Drain Soul (paying 2 life to gain 3) made no sense, and i never ever played Endgame in a way that made a difference to the outcome of the game.

Shard of the Naaru counters many decks like Pogo and Patches.
Astral Automaton is a good fit for the second slot, as it snowballs nicely.

and as Quakins already mentioned below: flik skyshiv + counterfeit coin is a thing people are doing

i am deeply impressed how far out of the box hearthstone can be taken.
the only twist about the deck is that you need 2 real mana crystals (not just 1 crystal and the coin), so going second maybe means that you die to T1 Embiggen-Embiggen-Patches from your opponent. … but on the other hand that is true for almost every deck

i totally agree that wild packs are vastly overpriced, but at least they give me access to to the legacy cards that were taken away from my collection by the core set rotation.

That being said, I like the quest of completing entire sets, and I hate what they have done with the cereation of the cavern of times set: They just effectively disabled the duplicate protection for all reprinted cards, so there are like 18 legends that you can pull twice, 16 epics that you can pull 4 times each, thereby making the completion of sets much more difficult.

Maybe blizzard will someday clean up the mess they created, but i highly doubt it because it would just reduce the amount of money collectors have to spend

I like the idea of T1 crane game into Doom Guard, then buffing them with Monstrous Form and Power Overwhelming and finally copying them with Reverberations for a T1 kill.

I played the deck a lot, and the biggest issue is that the deck fizzles badly if you draw even a single Doom Guard or if you destroy one by Fracking while digging for Crane Game.

At first I wanted to solve that by adding Plot Twist, but I ultimately settled for Sir Finley, Sea Guide and also a pair of Enhanced Dreadlords as Crane Game Targets 3 and 4.

T1 kills are now far less likely, but still possible, and the total win rate goes up. Of course you are still an underdog against Burn Druid, but all other matchups are manageable.

I cut Drain Soul, Hand of Gul’dan and Endgame, adding Molten Giants, a Sacrifical Pact and the above mentionend enhanced Dreadlords instead (I do not own The Soularium).

Now the biggest remaining issue is if you mulligan into all those 1-mana-spells that need a minion on your side instead of Crane Game or draw spells.

There are decks beyond Burn Druid in this format:

I have seen …

Paladin with Tip the Scales and with Front Lines.

Hunter with Nagrand Slam and with Guardian Animals into Tundra Rhino to Charge Unleash the Beast.

Token Druid with all kinds of expensive global buffs.

… but in the end Burn Druid is still king

Arcane Artificer and Solid Alibi do not work as they did, so that strategy is dead.
(apparently this is stated in the “general information” in bold, i just did not read it)

So Violet Illusionist and Blur from Demon Hunter are out too.

draw/heal/burn Druid on the other hand still works, but again time is your greatest issue.
(but even if you do not kill your opponent T1, you can still reduce his life enough to severely limit his options)

Apparently the Control Warrior deck from February’s Twist season worked just fine.
Just replace the Dragonslayers and the Big Ol’ Whelps

Kayn Sunfury destroys the idea of this brawl, but Pogo Hopper is still king of it (and of many many other tavern brawls too)

I managed to win with Demon Hunter against Paladin by copying his injured Titan 4 Times with the 2 Locations i had, but yes, most decks did not work.

You named Paladin and Hunter, and I think the Death Knight deck also does what it is supposed to: buffing undeads in hand to double digits and preying on the anemic decks most other classes have

i think the reason why people do not like the brawl is that your dyes are often the worst cards in your deck. you may get some tempo during turns 1-3 if you get a red dye or two, but after that every dye feels like a lost draw.
Hawkstrider, Goblin and Spoon are also outright bad cards, but on the other hand Carrots feel unfair, especially when the opponent draws it.
windfury, taunt, lifesteal and divine shield are mostly useless on the small minions spawned by noblegarden eggs.
rush and stealth are only somewhat useful in combination with poisonous, because again the minions are small and die easily, so either you trade immediately by rush-poison, or you build a makeshift patient assassin by stealth-poison and wait for a good target.
However, all those tricks leave you down on cards, so unless you play warlock your easter shenanigans will leave you with an empty hand.

To save the brawl it would be necessary to buff the dye cards e.g. by giving the target an extra +1/+1, and to make up for the card disadvantage by giving every player 1 dye per turn for free but remove them from the deck so you would not draw them.
also the Hawkstrider and the Goblin have to be buffed: Hawkstrider should maybe get taunt or be cheaper, and Goblin should be 2/5 and spawn a Noblegarden Egg whenever it is damaged, so he has at least some function in the brawl.
Spoon should be removed completely, or maybe it could draw a card for every egg hatched or for every dye triggered, but as it is now I just don’t get what the idea of the card is from a gameplay perspective.

the workshop bundle gave you 2 legends and 20 packs for 20€

the “legends of [expansion]” bundles also used to give you 2 legends and 20 packs for 20€

why now only 1 legend and 20 packs for 20€ ???

these are the strategies of the deck recipes:
DH: megatherion + illidari inquisitor
DK: hand buff undead
DR: spell damage
HU: big beasts
MA: spells only
PA: aggro token
PR: zarimi dragons + aman thul copies
RO: pirates aggro
SH: chaos tendrils
WL: big demons
WA: taunt buffs

The paladin deck seems to be the strongest.
Managing the otk kill with druid was quite difficult.
With taunt warrior i also needed some attempts to get a win.
The demon hunter deck has expensive cards and a lot of card draw, so be careful with hand space.

that’s definitely bad news for wild even death knight

Well, this time Lor’themar Theron is bugged and reverts the minions in you deck to their original stats with +1/+1.

Titans are excellent options for this format, which is terribly fast now – many games end after 2-4 turns.

Odyn is very popular among Warriors
Warlocks like their Doomkins
First turn Elise from Priest also worked well against me

I seem to be the only one who plays Sathrovarr though …

a nice idea, and most of the cards look quite playable at first sight

unfortunately most gifts are just 3 choices out of 4 options: small removal / large removal / global removal / development

seems like that strategy is still sucsessful in this brawl after 4 months, especially when reinforced by Blindeye Sharpshooter 😉

Given that you use up all your mana with the card that you draw, what do you do with the other cards in your hand? the only way to use them is either by discarding/reshuffling, discounting, or by using zero mana cards. Demon Hunter does all of the above.

I can confirm this.
Got a T5 thaddius.
more minions means more coins, which summons even more minions

I can confirm this.
Got a T5 thaddius.
more minions means more coins, which summons even more minions

(un)fortunately Mechwarper has been banned this time (jan 2024), so that deck from mar 2023 cannot be played any more