Hearthstone 23: The Evil League of EVIL

[Gandariel]

Hero power to freeze a minion would be terrible design and should never be a thing.

Shamans death Knight power was supposed to do that, but in playtesting they realized it's too oppressive and not fun to play against, so they scrapped it.

[Geno9999]

Hero power to freeze a minion would be terrible design and should never be a thing.

Shamans death Knight power was supposed to do that, but in playtesting they realized it's too oppressive and not fun to play against, so they scrapped it.

Should only be a thing in PvE*

Afterall, Jepetto Joybuzz can't complain on Blizzard forums/Reddit that I've froze his board turn after turn after turn so that he effectively only has 3 spaces for minions, which is very likely to be clogged up with more 1/1s.

[Zevox]

Blech, today's Brawl is a rather crappy new idea of theirs. Pick which Brawl's set of rules you want to use, get a completely random deck... and then get paired with someone else who is probably using a different set of rules entirely. And here I was assuming when I first saw it that you'd only get paired with people who picked the same rule set. Yeah, this is rapidly going to devolve into people identifying one or two rule sets that are just more unfair than the others. Probably "play a minion, get a 0 cost spell" and maybe Randomonium, if I were just guessing off the brief glance I had at them.

Fortunately I got a first opponent who did nothing most of the game and ended up disconnecting, so got my pack and don't need to bother with it from there.

[Lord Raziere]

well I know how to exploit the void singularity brawl to its fullest extent so I picked that and luckily got another person who made the mistake of doing that as well and I just out-singularity'd them, just playing my own game as well as I know how.

[Rynjin]

I tried several of the Brawls to get some quests done. Had a good amount of fun myself.

[Zevox]

well I know how to exploit the void singularity brawl to its fullest extent so I picked that and luckily got another person who made the mistake of doing that as well and I just out-singularity'd them, just playing my own game as well as I know how.

Honestly, that one feels like it would be one of the weaker ones, since that Brawl is normally one where you make the deck yourself, and you don't get to do that this time. Harder to exploit it with a deck full of random cards.

[The Glyphstone]

This brawl feels almost R-P-S in a way, some decks are clearly counters to others. Void Singularity is vulnerable to targeted removal, which certain decks have and others dont - Cloneball is a favored matchup, Burgled Spells is very likely to go poorly for the Void if it gets handed removal. Cloneball is good versus a lot of the minion spam decks since it can force 3 or 4 to 1 trades.

[otakuryoga]

i can confirm that beating the 207th Brawl Spectacular with all 9 types earns you

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absolutely nothing

[The Glyphstone]

The Romance Novelist boss in this wing is vicious if you're not running a swarm deck.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The Romance Novelist boss in this wing is vicious if you're not running a swarm deck.

Oh yeah, I got lucky there. I had four copies of the 3-mana 3/6 Murloc that overloads your opponent and never ran into that hero power haha.

[Yael]

i can confirm that beating the 207th Brawl Spectacular with all 9 types earns you

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absolutely nothing

Phew, I actually got scared there...!

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Imagine blizzard actually giving awesome prices for the brawl spooky

[Grytorm]

Hello again. I had... another idea! But I am not certain on fine details so I wanted to share it.

Ancient Ichor (Heart of the Ancient One)
Epic or Legendary Warrior Spell
4 Mana
Twinspell
Deal 4 damage to a minion. If ??? summon a Blood of the Ancient One.

I know the mana cost, the rarity and the damage would need tweaking. What I'm really not certain of is what the trigger condition for this should be. Like I can think of a few things but the first few that come to mind seem overpowered. Like "If it survives" or maybe "If that minion cost six or more". Any thoughts?

[Zevox]

Hello again. I had... another idea! But I am not certain on fine details so I wanted to share it.

Ancient Ichor (Heart of the Ancient One)
Epic or Legendary Warrior Spell
4 Mana
Twinspell
Deal 4 damage to a minion. If ??? summon a Blood of the Ancient One.

I know the mana cost, the rarity and the damage would need tweaking. What I'm really not certain of is what the trigger condition for this should be. Like I can think of a few things but the first few that come to mind seem overpowered. Like "If it survives" or maybe "If that minion cost six or more". Any thoughts?

I don't know if such a thing could be balanced. A twinspell that can summon a 9/9 which becomes a 30/30 if you get two of them onto the board, while doing damage to something as well? My initial reaction to the very idea is "no, don't do that, ever." Especially on a spell that's cheap enough that it could be cast twice in the same turn, that definitely could never be printed.

[Grytorm]

I don't know if such a thing could be balanced. A twinspell that can summon a 9/9 which becomes a 30/30 if you get two of them onto the board, while doing damage to something as well? My initial reaction to the very idea is "no, don't do that, ever." Especially on a spell that's cheap enough that it could be cast twice in the same turn, that definitely could never be printed.

Yeah I thought Blood of the Ancient one triggered at the start of the turn rather than the end. I did think of possible condition just now which might work okay. Probably make the spell a Legendary and rename it so you only have one shot.

"If Ancient Ichor kills a Legendary minion summon a Blood of the Ancient One."

Edit: But even then the 9/9 aspect would be really nasty and really bully cheap legendaries.

[Zevox]

Yeah I thought Blood of the Ancient one triggered at the start of the turn rather than the end. I did think of possible condition just now which might work okay. Probably make the spell a Legendary and rename it so you only have one shot.

"If Ancient Ichor kills a Legendary minion summon a Blood of the Ancient One."

Edit: But even then the 9/9 aspect would be really nasty and really bully cheap legendaries.

Precisely. Triggering this at all is absolutely nuts if it costs anything less than 9-10 mana because of that, much less triggering it twice. Compare it to other cards that already exist - if the summon goes off, you've gotten a better value than Northsea Kraken (9/7 battlecry deal 4, 9 mana), which was a powerful arena card but not quite strong enough for constructed. If it's much cheaper than that though, it starts to look crazy compared to Firelands Portal (7 mana deal 5 plus summon a random 5-drop), which was one of the strongest spells Mage has ever had.

And it's not like legendaries don't show up in almost every deck, or like there aren't those upon whom something like this could prey. Zilliax comes to mind as a popular one right now, for instance. If something like this existed and was priced such that people actually wanted to play it, dropping him without magnetizing him to a non-legendary minion becomes insanely risky.

[Requizen]

I feel like this Heroic wing was a lot easier than the last one for some reason. Or maybe I just had a super sick run.

[The Glyphstone]

I crushed Madame Goya, but Boommaster Flark destroyed me. This overall seems to be a wing that rewards token decks and swarms, rather than big fatties with bosses like Flark and Cravitz Lorent.

[Grytorm]

Yeah. The concept as is just wont work. I did think of a less broken idea along the same concept. Ancient Ichor: 4 mana, deal 3 damage to a minion. If it survives summon a 3/3?Ancient Spawn.

Ancient Spawn would have the Blood of the Ancient One effect but they turn into a 9/9 Blood of the Ancient One. At this point I recognize that it is still too strong but within the realm of reason.

[The Glyphstone]

That's basically an 8-mana spell to summon a vanilla 9/9, with conditionals that your targets can't die from the casts, since otherwise your Spawn is going to die before it merges. So it's not that OP at all, really.

[Gandariel]

Yeah. The concept as is just wont work. I did think of a less broken idea along the same concept. Ancient Ichor: 4 mana, deal 3 damage to a minion. If it survives summon a 3/3?Ancient Spawn.

Ancient Spawn would have the Blood of the Ancient One effect but they turn into a 9/9 Blood of the Ancient One. At this point I recognize that it is still too strong but within the realm of reason.

This one is actually not OP. Again, the easiest comparison is North Sea Kraken, which can deal face damage, and is not resteicted at all.
Your card, however, has the benefit of being TWO weaker flanking strikes.

I think you've actually hit a very good balance point. The 8 mana version is a worse Kraken, the 4 mana version is a much worse flanking strike, but it gives a card.

It might still be a tad overpowered, but honestly I think it's printable.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The idea of a Twinspell that can summon a Blood of the Ancient One is actually interesting to me, because it means it's a win condition you could actually build around. A 9-mana twinspell that does nothing but summon a 9/9 Blood could plausibly summon the Ancient One, although obviously you wouldn't want someone to just slot it into their deck on its own. So put some sort of condition on it, and now it works basically like a worse Nomi that's limited to one class.

[Zevox]

This one is actually not OP. Again, the easiest comparison is North Sea Kraken, which can deal face damage, and is not resteicted at all.
Your card, however, has the benefit of being TWO weaker flanking strikes.

I think you've actually hit a very good balance point. The 8 mana version is a worse Kraken, the 4 mana version is a much worse flanking strike, but it gives a card.

It might still be a tad overpowered, but honestly I think it's printable.

I think I agree, I think that one is much more balanced. It's a lot of work and pretty impractical to reach the 30/30 dream, but the conditions are sufficient to keep its regular strength in check while still giving it some appeal.

The idea of a Twinspell that can summon a Blood of the Ancient One is actually interesting to me, because it means it's a win condition you could actually build around. A 9-mana twinspell that does nothing but summon a 9/9 Blood could plausibly summon the Ancient One, although obviously you wouldn't want someone to just slot it into their deck on its own. So put some sort of condition on it, and now it works basically like a worse Nomi that's limited to one class.

A Twinspell at 9 that just summons a Blood of the Ancient One would basically just be re-printing the minion. I mean, I guess it would only take up one slot in your deck instead of two, but still, the exact same reasons that Blood never worked before would remain.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A Twinspell at 9 that just summons a Blood of the Ancient One would basically just be re-printing the minion. I mean, I guess it would only take up one slot in your deck instead of two, but still, the exact same reasons that Blood never worked before would remain.

It also changes the probability of drawing into the combo.

[Lord Raziere]

okay, yesterday I put Snip-snap into my secret mech paladin deck.

and oh my, its addition just somehow made the deck great. I won most of the games I got in trying to get my five wins for the next card back, I think 5/7. I think Snip-snap is my new favorite card, and I'm not even being broken with it. i think I found my new consistent deck for now.

[Psyren]

A Twinspell at 9 that just summons a Blood of the Ancient One would basically just be re-printing the minion. I mean, I guess it would only take up one slot in your deck instead of two, but still, the exact same reasons that Blood never worked before would remain.

Wouldn't it be 4 copies instead of 2? Sounds like a big difference to me, unless you made it legendary.

The other big difference from where I'm sitting is that there are a lot more spell discovery/random effects than minion ones (and a smaller pool to draw from.) Depending on where you put it - Warlock, Warrior, Shaman or Priest seem likely - you could have even better odds of getting it regularly. (Or a completely random control deck could nab it.)

Hell, that 1-mana lackey could get this.

[Rodin]

Wouldn't it be 4 copies instead of 2? Sounds like a big difference to me, unless you made it legendary.

The other big difference from where I'm sitting is that there are a lot more spell discovery/random effects than minion ones (and a smaller pool to draw from.) Depending on where you put it - Warlock, Warrior, Shaman or Priest seem likely - you could have even better odds of getting it regularly. (Or a completely random control deck could nab it.)

Hell, that 1-mana lackey could get this.

The problem with Blood of the Ancient One was never drawing the minions. Keeping it on the board is nearly impossible on turn 9, and playing a 9 mana 9/9 with no board impact makes it impossibly slow. The worst part is that your opponent doesn't even have to answer the first one if they're at anything approaching parity. They spend the turn you play it to get ahead on board, then spend the turn you play the second one to get even more ahead on board, and if they somehow don't have lethal yet they simply spend a hard removal card to get rid of the 30/30.

The only way I could see it working is if the 30/30 appeared the instant you had both on the board, and it had Charge. Otherwise, it's too resource intensive for you to do anything with it.

As for discovering it, the only time I see that being an option is if you're up against a hard control deck. And then you're not trying to make the 30/30 - you're playing it like Free From Amber as a way to get additional 9/9 minions that your opponent has to spend resources removing. You would never actually combine them unless the game was going to fatigue and you knew your opponent had run out of hard removal.

[Resileaf]

Well, today was a pretty awful Hearthstone day. Went from rank 6 to rank 9.
I'm not even feeling happy that I got Betrug from the pack I bought.

[Grytorm]

The reason I thought of Warrior originally is because I liked the idea of making it a grown up version of Blood to Ichor. I think an variant would be having the card do enough damage to a minion that actually making it survive is difficult.

Ancient Ichor 6 Mana
Warrior Epic Spell
Twinspell
Deal 6 damage to a minion. If it survives summon a 9/9 Blood of the Ancient One.

Thinking about it more. I think this might in some ways be problematic in a different way. Its a control card that is probably the best against other control decks. It wouldn't matter too much I think at least in this meta, not a whole lot of ways to get the minion with this design except for Giant Mage which is good at putting out lots of big threat at once.

[Rodin]

Lost my first attempt to beat the final wing on Normal mode. Not to any level of difficulty, but to RNG. I met Haro, who cast Free From Amber to get Catrina. She then proceeded to resurrect about a million Convincing Infiltrators and Deathlords. I wasn't TOO concerned, because I had both double health and the "2 armor when a minion dies" perk along with a Recruit Paladin deck, so I was virtually immortal.

Around about 40 HP and 10 cards left, I finally bust through the wall of taunts to take down Catrina and a Tyrantus he had managed to get off a random 10-drop from that Forbidden spell Priest has. Easy, right?

Noooope. He casts Resurrect, and gets Catrina. Who resurrects Tyrantus. With 30+ minions in the Rez pool.

I need to go punch something for a while.

[Nerocite]

Beat the final wing on normal with the stock Warlock power/deck, Azari is disgustingly good.