hearthstone Heroic Tavern Brawl Released

[L0rinda 307]

The much talked about Heroic Tavern Brawl is finally here, and as you can see above, it comes with a warning!

In this week's Brawl, you play a normal Standard constructed deck of your choice, from your collection and play until you either win twelve, or lose three, matches. At the end of the Brawl you are rewarded based on how well you performed, much in the same manner as Arena. The catch, it costs 1000 gold. I have calculated the payouts for each expected win rate in a previous post, and that table can be found here. The short version is that you need around 54% win rate for a break even payout, and that assumes you really value Golden Legendary cards. The rake is high in this Brawl.

Predictably this has been a big success with streamers, with WtyBill from Team Celestial being one of the first confirmed players to reach 12 Wins. He achieved this feat with Tempo Mage.

Perhaps an even more spectacular feat was that of Rdu and Ek0p. They managed to go 11 wins and then 10 wins playing Priest. It was a Dragon Priest deck, rather than control, but this is still a spectacular result. Congratulations to them!

Of course, as the novelty wears off, and as players start to run out of gold, this Brawl will get more and more difficult, so my recommendation is that if you fancy having a go at this, you do it while there are still some lower ranked players in the pool.

[Laragon 269]

I was really sad this was the brawl. I do wonder why they did a huge gold sink right before the next expansion...

[Strongpoint 74]

7 hours ago, Laragon said:

I was really sad this was the brawl. I do wonder why they did a huge gold sink right before the next expansion...

Are you trying to say that people spending more money on Hearthstone is somehow bad for the game?

[Brando 3]

It's too costly and the battles are just your regular ladder crap. If it was arena style deckmaking I would definitely go for it.

Also the rewards are not particularly attractive for someone who mostly plays arena. To get your gold back you need to win 11-12 matches. 

Disappointing brawl

[PaasHaaS 81]

It costs way too much for me to do it myself, but I still think it's a great brawl as it's giving me hours upon hours of great viewing material from those participating streamers. 

[L0rinda 307]

1 minute ago, PaasHaaS said:

It costs way too much for me to do it myself, but I still think it's a great brawl as it's giving me hours upon hours of great viewing material from those participating streamers. 

Look at this one as a learning opportunity guys. Most of the streamers are try harding much more than usual on this, and so you can get an insight into the thought process of the very best.

While I understand it is frustrating, and definitely should be avoided by most people, there's a good chance it is a test for something like a tournament mode, and it is only one week out of over seventy where it has been really anti-casual.

[PaasHaaS 81]

11 minutes ago, L0rinda said:

Look at this one as a learning opportunity guys. Most of the streamers are try harding much more than usual on this, and so you can get an insight into the thought process of the very best.

While I understand it is frustrating, and definitely should be avoided by most people, there's a good chance it is a test for something like a tournament mode, and it is only one week out of over seventy where it has been really anti-casual.

Definitely yeah. I was watching Firebat last night, who was really tryharding, and it gives incredible insight into the matchups etc.

Though of course I'm mainly looking forward to watching DisguisedToast fuck people over with stupid decks.

[Laragon 269]

4 hours ago, Strongpoint said:

Are you trying to say that people spending more money on Hearthstone is somehow bad for the game?

It won't cause anyone to spend more money though. People that were going to spend still will, and those that never do won't. It's a clever brawl idea, and a long awaited reward for streamers. However, no one on this forum so far has said they are even playing it.

I'd consider it a failure of a brawl if it's literally just a streamers showcase, as it seems. That's what legendary already is. Spending money isn't bad for the game, but alienating a large population of your fan base is. If this is a one off (or rare pre-expansion occurrence), it's fine. If they consider it a success and it comes back as often as the crossroads brawls, it could be crippling over time.

[Gren 0]

I think this would have been a much more user friendly brawl if they would have at least given everyone one shot for free and pay 1k coins for a second or each additional attempt to hit your 12 wins. I don't think most casual players want to drop 1k coins on such an unknown as far as how the meta is running in a pay to play tavern brawl, and even more so just before an expansion. Maybe next time.

[CaptLando 26]

I am a casual player, and I had the gold available, so I forked over the 1k. I'll try anything at least once! The competition is fierce indeed. It made me feel very mediocre, lol. :/ I threw together a midrange hunter featuring Barnes and was knocked out after 4 wins.

My 1st loss was to a Totem Shaman. Out of my 7 encounters, 3 of them were with Resurrect Priest. They were responsible for my 2nd and 3rd losses. I also fought a C'Thun Mage, a C'Thun Druid, and an Astral Communion Druid (was surprised to see one of those in there). With control priest being so prevalent, maybe build a deck to counter that deck type as best you can...

I did not break even with 4 wins, but I think I would still try this again in the future. Good luck to any of you here who has the guts to give it a go! I applaud you for your willingness to put yourself out there and experience something new. :)

[Keizoku 185]

4 hours ago, L0rinda said:

Look at this one as a learning opportunity guys. Most of the streamers are try harding much more than usual on this, and so you can get an insight into the thought process of the very best.

While I understand it is frustrating, and definitely should be avoided by most people, there's a good chance it is a test for something like a tournament mode, and it is only one week out of over seventy where it has been really anti-casual.

I look at it as a complete waste of time. Constructed is already anti-casual enough for all play modes one-hundred percent of the time, thank you very much!

If they want to implement a tournament mode for 'elite players', fantastic, but not at the cost  of the only thing that has so far been (almost always) accessible to everyone.

[Bozonik 94]

I like the idea of the format but it didn't work great for me. My best performing ladder deck is pirate warrior, with which I tend to finish around 2000 Legend rank each month on EU servers. I figured it was best to just play your best performing ladder deck for this, but as it turned out the meta seemed rather different to me. Still plenty of shamans, but a lot more control and reno decks than I normally see on the ladder. I went 4, 1, 2, 1, 2. Admittedly I made some bad plays and should've won a few more, and I also had some pretty horrible luck with opponents getting Malygos/Rag/Thaurisan from Barnes and spell totems seemingly at will. So I expect my long-run average would have been higher than that rubbish. But still, with a entry cost that could buy 50 packs and a return of the equivalent of 20.6 packs (in contrast, a run of 4, 1, 2, 1, 2 in arena would cost the equivalant of 7.5 packs and on average return the equivalent of 7.19 packs) if it were a permanent, or even recurring, feature I don't see how I could justify it. And if everyone bar the very top players gave up with it, even they would end up with a bad return.

I'd like to see it again, but with some changes. For £8 entry fee, you want to get a decent play-time out of it. Effectively losing £6.5 of it and playing for 20 minutes going 1-3 doesn't seem feel so good. One option could be to have a chance to play an AI in the early games (e.g. guaranteed matches 1-3, 75% 4-5, 50% 6-7, 25% 8-9 and expand the max wins to 18, and adjust the prizes appropriately). That way on average you get 6 free wins and so everyone gets at least 9 games per run.

Alternatively, keep it as it is but let people choose their entry fee. Maybe three options of (i) no fee - you win no prizes (except maybe one free chest for the first win to keep it consistent with normal tavern brawl) but get the normal 10 gold for every three wins, (ii) same fee as arena with similar prize distribution as arena, (iii) same fee as this week and same prizes. People in (iii) can still match people in (i) but like arena you only match people on the same score as you.

 

 

Edited November 17, 2016 by Bozonik

[L0rinda 307]

3 hours ago, Keizoku said:

I look at it as a complete waste of time. Constructed is already anti-casual enough for all play modes one-hundred percent of the time, thank you very much!

If they want to implement a tournament mode for 'elite players', fantastic, but not at the cost  of the only thing that has so far been (almost always) accessible to everyone.

I don't think tournament mode will be for elite players, they're just getting those guys to test it out. I should think such a mode would have different entry costs, and many would be low enough to be not worth the time for those guys.

[YourGod 15]

I only got four wins *sigh* 

 

Then again, I played priest

[mimech 24]

Feels like an elite-only tavern brawl.  Sucks for the non-elite.  (And the elite already have ranked to show off in.)

It also feels like a cynical gold-sink pre-expansion.  I'm saving my gold for the expansion, so nyah boo, sucks to ya!

Edited November 18, 2016 by mimech

[Strongpoint 74]

I think this kind of format has tons of potential. Imagine the very same thing with 100 gold entry fee and rewards starting from something like a single common card. 

Imagine this with special rules like 35(25) card decks or forced inclusion when your deck is locked to have two tinyfins or whatever. I understand why they did plain boring standard but should it be something more interesting that rewards deck building skills it will be great to watch