Hearthstone 23: The Evil League of EVIL

[Stevesciguy]

Yeah, I didn't have any remaining quests, but I didn't get a new one for the day. (Though how is it possible to finish before you update? It won't let you start the game without the update once it's out.)

Also, the client was loading ridiculously slowly. Maybe that's a traffic issue, but yeesh, it was bad.

I logged in on my phone and played multiple games before the patch came out for android. Didn't know about the quest bug, so just lucky coincidence I decided to complete my quests.

Edit: Hearthpwn is also running a giveaway for preorder bundles. They have 10 to give away

[Seerow]

I got my new quest for the day, but it would not let me reroll a quest, which was somewhat annoying.

More annoying was I had two quests wanting me to play hunter, so I pulled in a zephrys hunter build off VS because I am lazy. 3 times in a row I got a randomly generated baited arrow, and proceeded to lose the game due to overkill not procing from it. The first time I figured I made a mistake and miscounted. Second time I did a double take and went "Wait no that dude was totally at 1, what the heck". The third time I generated one I just threw up my hands and rage conceded.



On the bright side, Battlegrounds was pretty fun. I played the tutorial plus 3 rounds. Right now my biggest feeling is that it'll get boring in the not so distant future due to the super limited card pool. Like in just those 4 rounds I felt like I was seeing the same handful of cards over and over. While that's arguably necessary for the upgrade mechanic to have any function at all, I'd love if it had a different random assortment of cards each time a new battleground starts, just to give a bit more variety from match to match. But that, combined with lack of rewards or any other sense of progression, and it'll end up feeling like tavern brawl, something to check out occasionally, but not a primary play mode.

Ignoring the rewards (which may well get added after leaving beta), some thoughts on the gameplay

Spoiler

Show

Murlocs and Demons felt pretty pervasive, probably because they are more strongly focused in the early buckets and as a community we may be focusing too much on the early game synergies. I say this because murlocs in particular generally lost out in the mid-late game. Taunts seem important to control the flow of where attacks are going, and what attacks first. There actually is a lot of strategy in the positioning and recruiting element, so I was fairly impressed with that.

While Murlocs would fizzle out after the early rounds, Demons seems a bit overtuned. They have two cards that I believe are unique to the mode. One of them is a 1 star card (so you can recruit turn 1) that gets permabuffed every time you summon a demon. In later rounds I was running into people with like 40/40 versions of this minion, which is just ridiculous. You can see where that can get silly quickly. Then there's another one (3 stars I think) that deals 3 damage to a random enemy minion every time a friendly demon dies. Add in that demons have a lot of good cards in both the early and late game, and the best early game and end game taunt, and MalGanis in the end game... it's a very strong route to recruit for. I'm not certain it's top tier (as noted my play time is ~1.5 hours so far with 4 total rounds played) but early feeling is there.

My one first place finish actually came from playing Mechs. Early on I got very little that worked well together, so I spent a couple rounds pushing tavern level early and just accepted I was going to get hit in the face a couple times. Got down to ~15, then got 3 big mechs and stabilized. Followed by another 3 the following turn. The shredder family that generates another minion on deathrattle are super powerful in this mode, especially if you get them in gold where they drop two minions. There's also a minion with a pretty high health that gains +2/+2 whenever a friendly mech dies which was really strong in that run.

Powerful deathrattles on small bodies (such as the 2/2 that deathrattles to give your whole board +2/+2) are very powerful, and battlecry buffs are potentially very good because those effects are permanent. Notably Defender of Argus is useful to grant two minions of your choice taunt. I saw one person who made good use of the poison murloc to basically give his entire board poisonous, which cost me a match where I was counting on a huge taunt to save me.

Speaking of that was another fun card that showed up exclusive to the mode. a 3/1 that gains health based on how much health you have lost. So I grabbed it when down to 3 health, played it, hit it with defender of argus, had a 4/38 taunt. Carried me through two rounds until finding the poisonous murloc dude I mentioned.

Anyway tl;dr version is Battlegrounds is fairly fun and has more depth than you'd expect from the initial pitch. Some tuning, especially of the mode specific cards, is probably in order, but I enjoyed it and hope they can find a way to make it something players will want to play long term.

[Stevesciguy]

How do you break an entire mechanic? Especially when none of the actual fixes seem to have anything to do with said mechanic

[Rynjin]

How do you break an entire mechanic? Especially when none of the actual fixes seem to have anything to do with said mechanic

The Battlegrounds mode required major tweaks to the underpinnings of the whole game, to allow for 8 players (where before there was a hard limit of 1 player, 1 opponent). My guess would be that the game now sometimes gets confused on whose turn it is, since Overkill only triggers on the turn of the person whose board contains the Overkill minion.

[otakuryoga]

4 games
1st
2 2nd's
3rd

1st place was on a pogo run
those lil buggers get ugly fast

The Battlegrounds mode required major tweaks to the underpinnings of the whole game, to allow for 8 players (where before there was a hard limit of 1 player, 1 opponent). My guess would be that the game now sometimes gets confused on whose turn it is, since Overkill only triggers on the turn of the person whose board contains the Overkill minion.

probably something like this
secrets for example will go off whether your minion is killed on defense or attack
since its not really ever "your" turn

Right now my biggest feeling is that it'll get boring in the not so distant future due to the super limited card pool. Like in just those 4 rounds I felt like I was seeing the same handful of cards over and over. While that's arguably necessary for the upgrade mechanic to have any function at all, I'd love if it had a different random assortment of cards each time a new battleground starts, just to give a bit more variety from match to match. But that, combined with lack of rewards or any other sense of progression, and it'll end up feeling like tavern brawl, something to check out occasionally, but not a primary play mode.

i like that idea..would be a nice thing to see
will go to the forums when i get home later and suggest/second the idea(this is beta after all so changes could still happen)

[Stevesciguy]

I realized the other day that I hadn't gotten the guaranteed legendary from opening the first 10 Witchwood packs, so I've been buying those recently.

Today I got it. It was Splintergraft

[otakuryoga]

if not for the worst luck in the world I wouldn't have any...

pick Jaraxxus in a battleground
1st 10 turns I see a grand total of THREE demons

[Zevox]

So, has anything been said about how quickly they're going to fix the game after the patch broke all those things? Because I kind of don't want play it until they do - if I can't get quests to earn gold, and mechanics might just not work right, there's kind of no point. Particularly since I can't even try the new mode yet since there's no way in hell I'm buying one of those expensive pre-orders.

[Stevesciguy]

So, has anything been said about how quickly they're going to fix the game after the patch broke all those things? Because I kind of don't want play it until they do - if I can't get quests to earn gold, and mechanics might just not work right, there's kind of no point. Particularly since I can't even try the new mode yet since there's no way in hell I'm buying one of those expensive pre-orders.

They're aware of the issues and are looking into them, but they haven't given any kind of estimate as to how quickly they'll be fixed.

Edit: new post on subreddit says that a patch will roll out on Monday or Tuesday

Edit 2: I should add, they've fixed the broken mechanics. Overkill and Sathrovarr work properly now, but other stuff will be fixed on Monday or Tuesday

[Psionic Dog]

So, has anything been said about how quickly they're going to fix the game after the patch broke all those things? Because I kind of don't want play it until they do - if I can't get quests to earn gold, and mechanics might just not work right, there's kind of no point. Particularly since I can't even try the new mode yet since there's no way in hell I'm buying one of those expensive pre-orders.

Do you have Twitch Prime? Some of the streamers have been (randomly?) dropping free early access drops to viewers who have a linked hearthstone account.

Edit: I haven't seen anyone rank the heros, so after playing for a bit yesterday here is my tier list ranking:

Spoiler: Battle Ground Hero Tiers

Show

Tier-1: Strong midgame, strong late game. Likely hits top 4, has an edge to make #1.
> Millificent Manastorm. A passive buff to a top-tier play strategy.
> Nefarian. 1 mana, auto-win early game, debuf divine shield late game.
> Giantfin*. The tokens are dinky, but they get summoned last by every starting minion. Ie: wins ties.
> Infinite Toki. Guarantees an early higher tier (or top tier) minion choice.

Tier-2: Strong midgame, weak late game. Likely hits top 4, no special edge to make #1.
> A. F. Kay. A mid game terror, but limited late game power.
> Patchwerk. Enough health to survive an extra late game loss.
> Patches. Less consistent version of Nefarian.
> Curator. Free early game unit with all the synergy. No further power.
> Queen Wagtoggle. A cheap small, semi-consistent, permanent buff. Limited end-game impact.
> Yogg-Saron. Gain extra minions with extra stats. Very strong early game, unreliable late game.

Tier-3: Weak midgame, strong late game. Could go #1.. or get bumped at #7.
> Shudderwok. Can seriously stack stats mid-late game.
> Litch King. Give minion reborn for one game. Cheap and useful. Almost as useful as it sounds.
> Putricide. Make a single divine-shielded taunt, swip, or low-attach high-heath minion awesome.
> Jaraxxus. An expensive wide-board persistent buff.
> Bartendotron. Only good for rushing tiers to get first pick of late game minions.
> George. Persistent Divine Shield is amazing. Balanced by high cost to use.
> Great Akazamzarak. Usually not worth it. Occasionally finds Ice block.
> Ragnaros. Stronger but more expensive version of Patches.

Tier-4: ITS A TRAP! Skill testing power that encourages unwary players to make bad plays.
> Gallywix. Saving coins is very situational, and often just used to reroll minions.
> Giantfin*, if you think this makes full-murloc viable.
> King Mukla. Limited use, often encourages sub-optimal play.
> Rat King. A very strong passive buff that often isn't relevant.
> Dancin' Deryl. High skill ceiling and skill floor. Hard to play right, easy to play wrong.

Tier-5: Very Bad. When in doubt don't hero power.
> Lich Baz'hial. Pretend you are Bartendotron or Gallywix while burning health.
> Pyramid. A small random buff. Often worse than refreshing tavern.

[Rynjin]

Dancin' Deryl. High skill ceiling, low skill floor. Hard to play right, easy to play wrong.

That would be high ceiling AND high floor. Low floor means easy to pick up and play.

On Battlegrounds in general, I'm trying to figure out whether there's anything ever worth taking besides mechs? It's one of only two actual synergies in the game and the individual units are overall pound for pound better than the other one (demons).

Every match I've played has come down to mechs vs mechs in the endgame.

[Seerow]

That would be high ceiling AND high floor. Low floor means easy to pick up and play.

On Battlegrounds in general, I'm trying to figure out whether there's anything ever worth taking besides mechs? It's one of only two actual synergies in the game and the individual units are overall pound for pound better than the other one (demons).

Every match I've played has come down to mechs vs mechs in the endgame.

There's also Beasts, which I've seen win several times. Some of their lategame synergies (see: Mamma Bear) are downright gamewinning. Divine Shield/Taunt/Deathrattle can be soft synergies (minions that boost your taunt minions, or get buffed when a divine shield gets popped, etc) I've also seen some really strong boards from people using Khadgar and Baron Rivendare with deathrattle summons, though that's usually a subset or addition to other Beast/Mech synergies.

Yeah I played a few more hours of this and continue to be surprised how much depth I'm finding to the mode. Still not sure how long it will be before it's a 'solved' mode, but for now I'm having a lot of fun.

[Psionic Dog]

That would be high ceiling AND high floor. Low floor means easy to pick up and play.

On Battlegrounds in general, I'm trying to figure out whether there's anything ever worth taking besides mechs? It's one of only two actual synergies in the game and the individual units are overall pound for pound better than the other one (demons).

Every match I've played has come down to mechs vs mechs in the endgame.

Fixed.

Mechs have the advantage of having the most subtype variations and are able to find synergizing minions easier.

Beast combos are insane but usually requires buffed rat packs to completely refill the board with tokens combined with multiple pack masters, mama bears, and/or scavenging hyenas to make those tokens threatening.

Menagerie (mixed type) can also be good, but I don't think its quite as good a specialized mech/demon/beast combos.

The only strategy that I'm confident doesn't work is murloc. Anyone wanting to play murloc actually wants to play menagerie.

[Zevox]

Do you have Twitch Prime? Some of the streamers have been (randomly?) dropping free early access drops to viewers who have a linked hearthstone account.

I do not, no. The only thing I typically use Twitch for is to watch Evo each year, and I don't even log on for that, I just watch. I wouldn't even have an account with them if it weren't for the one Priest hero portrait they gave away that way.

Edit: I haven't seen anyone rank the heros, so after playing for a bit yesterday here is my tier list ranking:

Spoiler: Battle Ground Hero Tiers

Show

Tier-1: Strong midgame, strong late game. Likely hits top 4, has an edge to make #1.
> Millificent Manastorm. A passive buff to a top-tier play strategy.
> Nefarian. 1 mana, auto-win early game, debuf divine shield late game.
> Giantfin*. The tokens are dinky, but they get summoned last by every starting minion. Ie: wins ties.
> Infinite Toki. Guarantees an early higher tier (or top tier) minion choice.

Tier-2: Strong midgame, weak late game. Likely hits top 4, no special edge to make #1.
> A. F. Kay. A mid game terror, but limited late game power.
> Patchwerk. Enough health to survive an extra late game loss.
> Patches. Less consistent version of Nefarian.
> Curator. Free early game unit with all the synergy. No further power.
> Queen Wagtoggle. A cheap small, semi-consistent, permanent buff. Limited end-game impact.
> Yogg-Saron. Gain extra minions with extra stats. Very strong early game, unreliable late game.

Tier-3: Weak midgame, strong late game. Could go #1.. or get bumped at #7.
> Shudderwok. Can seriously stack stats mid-late game.
> Litch King. Give minion reborn for one game. Cheap and useful. Almost as useful as it sounds.
> Putricide. Make a single divine-shielded taunt, swip, or low-attach high-heath minion awesome.
> Jaraxxus. An expensive wide-board persistent buff.
> Bartendotron. Only good for rushing tiers to get first pick of late game minions.
> George. Persistent Divine Shield is amazing. Balanced by high cost to use.
> Great Akazamzarak. Usually not worth it. Occasionally finds Ice block.
> Ragnaros. Stronger but more expensive version of Patches.

Tier-4: ITS A TRAP! Skill testing power that encourages unwary players to make bad plays.
> Gallywix. Saving coins is very situational, and often just used to reroll minions.
> Giantfin*, if you think this makes full-murloc viable.
> King Mukla. Limited use, often encourages sub-optimal play.
> Rat King. A very strong passive buff that often isn't relevant.
> Dancin' Deryl. High skill ceiling and skill floor. Hard to play right, easy to play wrong.

Tier-5: Very Bad. When in doubt don't hero power.
> Lich Baz'hial. Pretend you are Bartendotron or Gallywix while burning health.
> Pyramid. A small random buff. Often worse than refreshing tavern.

Interesting. You disagree a little with the top 10 that Kripparian made, there. He puts The Curator in top 3 (alongside Toki and Nefarian), The Rat King as #4, and has George and Shudderwock at the tail end of top 10. Ones you rated highly that he didn't even include in his list are Giantfin, Patchwerk, and Patches.

Having not played it myself, can't give much of an opinion, obviously. Watching the videos on it, nobody struck me as especially bad at least, but I don't even know what all of them do since there's enough that I haven't seen them all used, so *shrug*.

[Tvtyrant]

So there appears to be a glitch allowing you to take infinite length turns. My opponent has been taking their turn for about 10 minutes now, they do something that makes an arrow appear from their deck aimed at a minion every minute or so and the turn rope hasn't shown up yet.

More information, they are holding a card like they are going to cast it as well.

Edit: It may not have been them doing anything. I couldn't concede either, I had to quit.

[Stevesciguy]

So there appears to be a glitch allowing you to take infinite length turns. My opponent has been taking their turn for about 10 minutes now, they do something that makes an arrow appear from their deck aimed at a minion every minute or so and the turn rope hasn't shown up yet.

More information, they are holding a card like they are going to cast it as well.

Edit: It may not have been them doing anything. I couldn't concede either, I had to quit.

When that happens to me, it means I've disconnected, but the game hasn't "realized" that that's happened.

[Tvtyrant]

When that happens to me, it means I've disconnected, but the game hasn't "realized" that that's happened.

The other guy could send me greetings though, and I could see where his cursor was moving over different cards.

[The Glyphstone]

Did they change how Quests work? I haven't seen any 'Win X games' quests since the new patch, only 'Play X games' which still award credit if you lose (but not if you Concede).

[Rynjin]

Did they change how Quests work? I haven't seen any 'Win X games' quests since the new patch, only 'Play X games' which still award credit if you lose (but not if you Concede).

I know they were planning to roll out an update to quests at some point, so sounds like it.

[Stevesciguy]

So there are some people with Hearthstone streams on 24/7 trying to get Battlegrounds early access, drops are so rare that some people question if they're even real, and I - someone who is not really all that interested in Battlegrounds - have gotten early access after watching Kripp's stream for maybe an hour a day. I feel bad

[Hamste]

Turns out battlegrounds is unplayable on my phone. It starts off ok but by the end it lags to the point that my taverns get skipped.

[Zevox]

Turns out battlegrounds is unplayable on my phone. It starts off ok but by the end it lags to the point that my taverns get skipped.

Seems likely to be for me as well. When I turned on my phone version of the game after the update I got a message about not having enough memory or something to run it well. Which I guess isn't super surprising, Hearthstone has never run that well on phone for me anyway. Good thing I mostly play on desktop.

Speaking of, Battlegrounds is finally in open beta. On the plus side, took first in my first game pretty easily - watching lots of videos of it being played payed off, it seems.

On the down side, what the hell? I only get to choose between two heroes and can't emote because I haven't bought those pre-orders for the new expansion? I'd assumed that crap was disabled during the beta since, you know, the set's not out yet. Or possibly dependent on the actual current set, which would easily qualify me. This just feels dickish on Blizzard's part, to lock those features until the expansion releases like this for anyone who's not coughing up $50+.

Edit: Up to four first-place finishes (using Curator, Millificent, AFKay, and Rat King), but two bad ones. One last-place as Jaraxxus (pick up two of the 1/1s that gain buffs from Demons early, proceed to barely get offered any Demons...), one fifth place as Pyramad (going Murlocs just because that was how the minions being offered to me went early, tried to switch to a more menagerie strategy but I just did not get enough good stuff for that offered to me). Not bad for my first day of trying the mode.

[Joran]

My phone is strong enough to play Battlegrounds which is great, because it differentiates it from TFT. Even when TFT makes it to phone, I find Battlegrounds super easy to play on my phone.

I played the requisite two games to get the quest and won 1 (Curator) and got second (Patchwerk) with the other. I know Murloc is generally considered weak, but I got really good rolls with the Megasaur rolls and got Divine Shield + Poisonous and landed a ton of buffs on them. Also, I don't think a lot of people know what they're doing at the moment, but I watched a good number of streams just because I can't find anyone playing actual regular Hearthstone.

[Tvtyrant]

Ignore this I am dumb.

[Resileaf]

The game mode does rely a bit much on luck. Like when I choose Jarraxus as my character, and not a single demon appears in the lineup.

[Zevox]

The game mode does rely a bit much on luck. Like when I choose Jarraxus as my character, and not a single demon appears in the lineup.

To be fair, I think Demons are just the weakest faction right now. There's fewer of them than the others, the ones that are there aren't great aside from the high-tier ones (Void Lord at 6 stars and Malganis at 5), and one of their special synergy cards (the 1/1 that buffs when you play a demon) slowly kills you to use. Soul Juggler, the 3/3 that deals 3 when a demon dies, seems to be the best reason to use demons, and there's not a lot of ways to fuel him with token demons to die.

The best factions seem to be Mech, Beast, or just mixing the best you can find of each for a menagerie strategy if you can get Amalgams (to make Menagerie Magician and Zoobot work to their full potential) and/or Lightfang Enforcer. Murlocs are also there, but seem too fragile in the late game most of the time, unless you get a lot of Coldlight Seers or Divine Shield + poisonous off Gentle Megasaur.

[Tvtyrant]

After about 4 attempts I can safely say my computer does not like this mode. The only one I finished was the training one.

[Stevesciguy]

I tried the Brawliseum with Swashburglar, Clever Disguise, Pick Pocket, and Academic Espionage. It did not work. My only win was against someone who conceded before the game started.

On the other hand, I got the Druid quest out of my pack, only 2 packs after I opened the Hunter quest yesterday, so I don't feel too bad.

Think I'm gonna save some gold and netdeck to try and farm this brawl. I'll feel dirty, but the packs and shiny cards will make up for it.

Edit: Arcane Missile, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Research Project, and Flamewaker is absolutely disgusting

Edit 2: apparently the brawl was so buggy that they've disabled it and will be rotating in an entirely different brawl tomorrow. No brawliseum farming for me, I guess I hope I at least get the rewards from my 5 win run

[Tvtyrant]

Anyone else finding Mechs are just better then the other tribals? I just one a run where my Murloc opponent had all 20/20s and I still won off of mechs having magnetic and general mech synergy.

[DaedalusMkV]

From what I've seen:

Demons are trash. They can be solid in the midgame with the juggler guy, but they just don't have the scaling potential and unit spawning of the other tribes to make up for it. Imp Gang Boss is no Security Rover, and Mal'Ganis comes in at tier 5 and really doesn't do enough to get you into the game unless he's golden. You might win with Demons if everyone else is fighting over the other tribes and you get to go nuts with them, but overall they just can't keep up with the rest. The best Demon in the game is Amalgam, IMO.

Murlocs have, debatably, the highest power ceiling of any team. A full board of Murlocs with Divine Shield, Windfury and Poisonous as Nefarian is, once you get a few health buffs down to beat token generators, virtually impossible to overpower. You simply trade too efficiently with everything. Even as, say, Megafin, just a fully buffed Murloc squad will poison out any other strategy pretty efficiently. The problem is that Murlocs basically need to roll multiple Megasaurs to get there, and any plan that absolutely requires you to get the same tier-6 minion three times in one game before you actually get to start winning is a bad strategy. The fact that the only method they have to spawn new units is being Megafin, and the only way they have to buff new spawns is Warleader, just makes getting to that unstoppable endgame unreliable. If you're the only person going Murlocs and you happen to be Megafin or Nefarian, you can definitely win games with them though. And there are some decent ways to weave them into a multi-tribe deck.

Beasts have the best early game with solid tier 1 and tier 2 minions, but run into the problem of their really good scaling being locked in at tier 6. Mama Bears win games, simply put. If you don't get your Mama Bear, the Mechs will overrun you with tier 3 and 4 scaling stuff and just out-stat you into oblivion. But if you get that giant Hydra or two, and that Mama Bear, and the amped up Rat Packs and Highmanes? Beasts are excellent in that case, and can easily overpower the others. They have the second best high-roll after Murlocs, and their very reliable early game is a big upside.

Mechs are just reliable. Unless literally everyone in the lobby is going for them, they just work. You have nothing you care about except Strongshell (which everyone wants) at Tier 5, so aside from Foe Reaper you can just stay at Tier 4 for ages, ramping your field constantly with Magnetic and Battlecry buffs, then abusing unit spawners and Junkbots for massive stat gains during the battle. Combined with the fact that Millicent is, thanks to Magnetic being what it is in this game mode, probably the most powerful Commander in the game and you get a recipe for Mechs utterly dominating. If the Murlocs don't get crazy lucky, the Mechs will just wipe them out before they ever get to their endgame. If the Beasts don't find their Mama Bear and buff their Hydras in time, they'll die too. The demons will lose whatever you do. Mech domination is just because they don't need specific tools like the other factions. You have two or three different options to scale up a Mech board, and while they might not be as big a power swing as what the other tribes can do they're still so reliable it's hard not to find at least one of them in good numbers.


With that said, a good Menagerie Commander has the flexibility to beat any tribe. If you can get your multi-Tribe buffers going early and often you can just drown everyone in raw stats to crush them. You can have your Hydra and eat your Security Rover cake, while Poisoning their cake with your Toxfin. Get Amalgams, win games.