another tavern brawl ruined by pogo hopper :-/

I think I have finally figured out the more or less optimal deck for this brawl.

The core is an undead engine powerded mostly by Flesh Behemoth and Catrina Muerte.
The deck has cheap hard removal and many 187 minions against the big minions everybody else brings to this brawl.
whirlpool is a reset button if your opponent gets a better start or has jailer active.

additional notes:
the best first turn play is usually Lorthemar.
the best thing you can do on an empty board is Thaddius+lots of bombs
therefore lorthemar and thaddius are the cards to mulligan for, the third card to keep is Flesh Behemoth to get the engine going. It will fetch additional behemoths or Catrina, which will bring back a Flesh Behemoth to restart the loop.
Other good undead minions for Carina to hit are Thaddius and Invincible (actually many games are decided early when a T1 Flesh Behemoth yields an early Thaddius in play and an extra one in hand). Sylvanas and Black Knight have weaker stats, but Behemoth also gives you copies of them into your hand and allow you to kill or steal more minions.

The best thing you can do on a full board on both sides is an infused Insatiable Devourer. Using Insatiable Devourer should only be done if it can hit 2 or three large creatures or if no other options are available.
If only your opponent’s side of the board is full, then Whirlpool shines, but don’t forget that it is your only answer to Jailer so do not waste it.
Drown plays a special role because it prevents Deathrattle triggers and Reborn from happening which can be detrimental, thinking of opposing Ozumats, Invincibles and Flesh Behemoths.
Cannibalize is much much weaker than Drown (despite similar cost and effect) and is therefore not used.

Blackwater Behemoth has only one purpose: To grow Banjosaurs that were stolen with Identity Theft or Sylvanas.
It is still a decent 1st turn play if you mulligan into nothing better, and it provides some lifegain.

Some things to watch out for:
– Opposing Flesh behemoths have actually very low attack considering the size of the minions in this format.
You should only kill them if you can handle the 22/22 Thaddius that may spawn from it.
– Speaking of Thaddius, it has a weird interaction with the coin, which counts as an even cost card and becomes more expensive.
– Thaddius should not be played T1 if you only have odd-costed cards in your opening hand
– as illogical as it might sound, taunt minions with immune (by jailer) no longer stop your opponent’s minions from attacking your hero. not all opponents know this though, so you might trick them into not attacking
– One opponent actually played T1 Jailer against me. I had the Whirlpool and was thinking that I had already won, but I rushed it and played the Whirlpool immediately, not considering that his other minions were still immune even after Jailer was removed. He finally did me in with a large immune Overlord Drakuru, a game that would have been easily won by playing the whirlpool two turns later.
– don’t forget to play your draw spells BEFORE you trade minions, just in case you hit infuse minions
– bear in mind that if silvanas steals neptulon, the 4/2 hands will not follow

possible opponents:
I found the priest mirrors to be the hardest opponents, but there are god draws from shaman (T1 „From the Other Side“) and warrior (T1 Blackrock n‘ Roll followed by Trenchstalker) that can do you in, also Druid (T1 Topior, early Nourish for mana crystals) may overwhelm you with 3/3 whelps.
Hunter seldom was a problem. T1 Banjosaur looks impressive, but there are so many ways to kill their big minions. However, Lorthemar-buffed King Krush was an issue, and also Mister Mukla’s battlecry kills the extra copy you would get into your hand from Flesh Behemoth’s deathrattle.
Warlock has Infantry Recruiter and Arson Accusation, but overall Priest has the stronger card pool in this format.

Popular choices for the „customizable slot“ that is currently occupied by Ysera the Dreamer in my deck are: Jailer, Sister Svelna (good backup if you destroy your deck with jailer), Sunwell, Astalor, Zola, Mish-Mash Mosher, Blademaster Okani, and – oddly enough – Soul Seeker.

cards that were not good enough imho were: core set onyxia and ozumat (occupy too much board space), cannibalize, shadow word: ruin, ragnaros, denathrius, deathwing, amplified elekk, sleepy dragon, malygos, party crasher, dr. boom, concert promo drake (you rarely hit his finale trigger), stormwind champion, thrive in the shadows,

here is the deck:

cheap removal:
2x (1) The Light! It Burns!
2x (2) Shadow Word: Death
2x (4) Drown

card draw:
2x (3) Identity Theft
2x (3) Switcheroo

187 minoins:
2x (4) Big Game Hunter
1x (4) The Black Knight
1x (6) Sylvanas, the Accused
1x (7) Blackwater Behemoth
1x (9) Alexstrasza the Life-Binder
2x (9) Insatiable Devourer
1x (10) Neptulon the Tidehunter
2x (10) Stoneborn General

undead engine:
1x (7) Catrina Muerte
1x (8) Invincible
2x (9) Flesh Behemoth

reset button:
2x (8) Whirlpool

broken in this format:
1x (7) Lor’themar Theron
1x (10) Thaddius, Monstrosity

customizable slot:
1x (9) Ysera the Dreamer

deck code:
AAECAZ/HAgqwigS0igSotgS/zgSk7wTfogXvogXCpQW3ngbJngYKwZ8ElKAEobYE+dsEuNwErO0E4O0E9vEE+PEE1JUFAAA=
#

Blackrock ‘n’ Roll allowed me to grab my weekly pack easily (T3 win or so involving Trenchstalker)

Thaddius also definitely looks broken in this format.

I think the key is to have your cheap cards handle your opponent’s big cards, like with execute, (naturalize), poison minions, freezing, big game hunter, …

basically you can search for “destroy” and look for chaep cards that might be useful in this format

it sure created a moment of suspense for both players when it was played.

not always, but as long as 3-health-minions were on the table on the receiving player’s side, both players held their breath until the outcome was determined

Yes, of the new cards Lightshow works best.
Groovy Cat also seems to be popular, but has only mediocre power level.
I even encountered Wicked Stab, which is clearly inferior to Mind Blast
(I had to complete the 5 tavern brawl wins weekly quest)

why didn’t they ban pogo?

i did not even have to play a card to get my pack this week.
my opp conceded before the game even started.

that’s how ridiculous pogo is in this format, and everyone knows it.

if blizzard ever wants to bring back this tavern brawl, they’d better ban pogo or don’t bring it back at all

I just played every deck until I had my first win and noted the win rates of every deck (my losses also counted as a win for the opposing deck and vice versa). Interestingly I played at least once against every deck, completing the list in my penultimate game:

1. priest 100% (+4) – Hedanis looks imba, because most of the preconstructed decks are too weak to contest him.
2. paladin 100% (+3) – those were mostly rushes
3. warrior 100% (+2)
4. shaman 67% (+1) – especially Pack the House dominates late midgames
5. death knight 60% (+1)
6. druid 50% (+/- 0)
7. rogue 43% (-1) – i have to admit that my opponents went 2-0 and i went 1-4 with it, so maybe it should be higher
8. demon hunter 33% (-1) – my win came in the mirror match
9. warlock 33% (-1)
10. mage 20% (-3) – i won a mirror match by fatigue, my opponents went 0-4 with it
11. hunter 14% (-5) – this is sad, because all those fat beasts look like fun, but the deck itself is atrociously misbuilt

thanks for your reply!

that’s bad news for E.T.C.:

on the one hand, there are already Necrotic Mortician and School Teacher for flexibility to adapt to a wide range of possible matchups, so E.T.C. is not really necessary.

on the other hand, there are so many possible matchups that three additional cards from E.T.C. cannot cover them all.

the “new” ideas I encountered were:
– Haleh as the “super-Flamewaker” and
– Meteorologist (because your hand will always be full)

and just like in Standard some months ago, Astalor handily replaces the nerfed Denathrius.

just cracked legend with a DK deck including E.T.C.
mostly used him for loatheb.
secret tech living dragonbreath against freeze shamans and freeze mages never happened
eater of secrets/ashen elemental would have been useful against ice block at times

the real mvps were astalor and sylvanas
honorable mention: battlefield necromancer

Since you have so much DK experiance, I wonder what your most frequent choices were for the battlecries of School Teacher and Necrotic Mortician?

For me, I think it’s Plague Strike, Blightwidow (only NM) and if I have a wide board of anemic Minions I also sometimes like anti-magic shell

Does this change any of the claims you made in this article?
https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/you-can-add-tech-cards-to-beat-the-top-meta-decks-but-you-probably-should-not/

I guess the most interesting band members are loatheb, smothering starfish, eater of secrets, spot removal and maybe some kind of board clear (it’s weird that spells can be band members too)

i don’t get the point of this brawl.

the best choice is a run-of-the-mill standard aggro deck like frost death knight.
there is no way to use the special rules to your advantage, except maybe that aggro gets a slight push because the interaction is even lower than in normal hearthstone games.

and still we get the same brawl every 4 months or so

I cannot wait to try out constructed quarter in my even DK deck 😀
So actually the card was buffed, not nerfed for me

Pillager is fubr now, but it was a non-interactive deck in the first place anyway.

I am curious what will happen when I just keep my Warlord discard deck unchanged.
It will probably need one more discard outlet and T4/T5 kills with 15-20 damage from hand are definitely no longer possible, but that is probably a good thing anyway

If I had to take a guess, I would say they will bring a separate rotating core set just for wild.

That would lower the entry barrier for new players that want to take a step “into the wild”

Once the players are hooked, they will pay for “wild bundles” and their dubious “duplicate protection”, that still floods you with duplicates no matter how many rares are still missing from your wild collection

This is the wild version:
– still lacks the necessary card draw, but has better damage spells.
– Arcane Artificer is a nice backup for Solid Alibi. They even combo for ultimate armor protection. The best thing is, that the need for mulliganing is now greatly reduced and you can keep all card drawing as soon as you see either Alibi or Artificer in your opening hand.
– Frost Bolt and Ice Lance are included because they can buy you a turn against Demon Hunter and Druid if you cannot win on the spot, and they are still sweet damage. The Ice Lance would possibly be a second GA Missiles if I owned it.
– play Arcane Brilliance always as your first card draw spell. It produces copies, so it will probably not to run itself out of targets (Pyroblast), but why take a chance?
– play Pyroblast always before you go below 10 life, because afterwards it is locked, even under Alibi protection.
– you can still win without alibi as long as your spells deal more than they cost (Missiles, Mask, Bolt, Lance and Pyroblast if necessary
– coin+firebolt is still one damage if you survived their T1 and if you do not need the mana for
Arcane Artificer
– alibi still lasts during your opponent’s turn, so if you fail to kill them, not everything is yet lost.
– even if you cannot get them to 0 health, the farther you whittle them down, the less options they have. still, some opponents can still win from very low life (demon hunter starting with blur and card draw for example), but you can do the same with Arcane Artificer(s) – Solid Alibi – draw spell(s)

AAEBAf0EAqwB27sCDpYFo7YCluQCtPwCgb8D99ED+90D0ewDopIE/J4E/Z4E4bkE8NMEyt4EAA==

2x (1) Arcane Artificer
1x (1) Ice Lance
2x (2) Cram Session
2x (2) Frostbolt
2x (2) Gifts of Azshara
2x (2) Research Project
2x (2) Solid Alibi
2x (3) Arcane Intellect
2x (4) Arcane Brilliance
2x (4) Fireball
2x (5) Apexis Blast
2x (5) Refreshing Spring Water
2x (7) Firelands Portal
1x (7) Greater Arcane Missiles
2x (7) Mask of C’Thun
2x (10) Pyroblast

as a side note, you have to play pyroblast first, because when you drop below 10 life the game does not let you play it, even under alibi protection

I just noticed that the new mercenaries Lilian and Godfrey are both rare, not epic.

So there are 3 rares (3rd is KelThuzad), 2 Epics (Arfus and Bigglesworth), and Jandice as Legend.

Already have all of them except Jandice.

If cash flow was really the intention of mercenaries (and let’s be honest: cash is the only thing blizzard really cares about), they should have tried to sell interesting items at reasonable prices.

All I get offered is cosmetics, and I could not care less.

For example, if they sold the equipment that needs heroic wins for runestones some impatient players might have paid for it.

They might even have added a button where you can refresh toki’s quest for gold, just to put one more leak into the player’s gold bags.

Let’s wait and see what they have in store for us with this “final” update.

I always thought the meaning of mercenaries is to winn all bouties, complete every task of each merc, and max out every merc.

Then you finally look around and wonder how much the world has changed while you were in your bubble grinding for mercenary coins.

I guess “mythic boss rush” is a nice offer to those who have already “completed” the game mode, but those people will probably not come back, or they will only briefly return to get the 6 new mercs, complete their tasks, max them out, and leave the game mode forever.