Why do they do spell based Tavern Brawls? I’ve played 6 games with a crappy Rogue deck (to try and get my quests done), and each and every one is against an AggroMage like TabbyCat uses.
Anybody have any tips, hints or advice on playing Aggro Paladin?
I almost always play various forms of Hunter or Warlock – used to play a lot of Mage . With the change coming up I decided to try a new class and Aggro Paladin is the Tier 1 deck that I have the cards for … but I seem to stink at it. I’m used to winning between 57 and 63 percent. Trying several different aggro paladin decks, I’m 35 / 44, less than 50% – and that’s playing mostly Casual – I just get totally destroyed in Ranked – went from 11 down to 16 very quickly.
I must be missing something basic with this class to be doing so poorly but I don’t have a clue what I’m doing wrong … very rarely find myself saying “Ooops, that was a mistake.”
One specific question: Is it often correct to be trading three or four 1 drops into one of their minions or should I usually be going face with them all if I’m not in imminent danger of dying or facing a likely Swipe or the like which would wipe them all out anyway?
Anybody know of any twitch streamers or youtubers who have some tutorials on this deck or any decent written guides?
Most likely, you’re not going face enough. You shouldn’t be trading, you should always be pushing face and letting your opponent try to remove your sticky divine shield minions, and then refilling your hand with divine favor. Save your owls for taunts, but other than that just throw everything on the board and go face.
Trading several of your minions into his minion is probably the worst thing you can do - if you ignored him and just went face, his big minion would only be able to kill one of your minions, and the rest of your minions get to go face again next turn.
Oh, it’s summoner again. Priest and Druid are also very strong, innervate into power of the wild is killer. I honestly don’t think Mage is that great in this brawl, you want expensive spells, not cheap spells, so flamewaker doesn’t do that much.
Mind Control into a free Deathwing is pretty fun.
@Tabby_Cat Thanks. My new mantra: “Face is the place.”
Also, to anybody who plays on an NVidia Shield tablet – they are being recalled due to fire danger from bad batteries. Actually, it looks more like they are just going to send a replacement rather than have you send it back. Mine has the bad battery.
Just wanted to touch on this. Crimethink gave a good explanation, but just to give some examples.
I have a 1 mana 2/1 Leper Gnome on the board, and my opponent plays a 2 mana 3/2 Knife Juggler. I use my Leper Gnome to kill his Knife Juggler. We would say that I traded my Leper Gnome for his Knife Juggler. In this case, it’s a good trade, because I used my 1 mana minion to take out his 2 mana minion. You will often also hear people say that I “traded up”, meaning that I spent 1 mana to take out his 2 mana.
If I have a 2 mana 3/2 Knife Juggler on the board, and my opponent plays a 1 mana 2/3 Zombie Chow, I could also trade my Knife Juggler for his Zombie Chow. This would be a bad trade, as I’m “trading down”, or trading my 2 mana for his 1 mana.
“Trading” is always used in the context of minions. However, in a more general sense, you have the concept of “Card Advantage”.
So, if I used a 2 mana Frostbolt (deals 3 damage) to take out a 2 mana Knife Juggler, I used 1 card to remove his 1 card, and that’s even on card advantage.
But if I used a 7 mana Flamestrike (deals 4 damage to all enemy minions) to take out 2 knife Jugglers, I used 1 card to deal with his 2 cards, and so I’ve “gained card advantage”.
The idea behind card advantage is, each of us starts with the same number of cards in hand. If I can use 1 card to deal with 2 of your cards, eventually you will have no cards left, and I will win the game with my remaining cards. That’s why card advantage is an important concept.
With this in mind, think about trading. If I have a 4 mana 4/5 Chillwind Yeti on the board, and I used it to kill a 2 mana 3/2 Knife Juggler, that Yeti is still a 4/2. And the turn after, I can use the damaged Yeti to kill a 4 mana 5/4 Lost Tallstrider. In that case, I’ve traded my Yeti for a Knife Juggler and a Tallstrider, and gained card advantage in the process.
This week’s brawl gives a preview of the new expansion cards and the two new mechanics: Joust and Inspire. Especially with Inspire the game changes dramatically, I think. You have a double positive effect for only two mana (your Hero power, and whatever the Inspire effect on the cards does), or even more if you have multiple Inspire cards on the table. This is huge. I don’t think there will be anymore decks without the Inspire mechanic in it.
Joust I’m a little less positive about. The cards that have it don’t get that much of a positive effect of it, and there is a big downside: you let you opponent give a preview of what is in your deck. On the other hand, you also get a peek at your opponent’s deck.
What do others think?
I’d tell you about inspire if I could actually play as Mage. >.>
Inspire provides some intense tempo though, especially with the mage power. In particular, the card that gains 1 health and the card that boosts hero power damage by 1 are definitely things to look out for.
Jousting I think was ok, but a hunter deck probably wasn’t the right call for it. The deck needs to be a lot heavier, and the high mana cards shouldn’t be crap commons or rares either. I think Blizz was probably limited by that, in that the high mana cards weren’t really effective, nothing like a Rag or Dr. Boom or anything like that. Instead we got the crappy “reverse corehound”. And not even any healing cards, and barely any taunt. I don’t see how they expected us to survive the first few turns, playing as Hunter, I had to go crazy on the tempo in the beginning if wanted to survive.
I actually like that Joust gives you a peek at the decks - so that you have a bit more info on what the other player is playing. Besides, joust decks will probably run heavy control, not combo or suchlike, so you probably won’t get much info out of seeing a joust deck’s cards (yeah, I got a Boom. You already knew that, and you still have to find a way to deal with it), but seeing that Malganis is not in your opponent’s hand, or a healbot, or Mountain Giants instead of Malygos, means a huge deal in how you would play.
Ayup. Just played a game with the Mage deck, and holy crap it is so much better than joust. I basically got the Kodo that gives you more Kodos, and my opponent couldn’t answer it, and got ran over by Kodos, since I also had the guy that lets you shoot twice a turn.
Also, 1 mana a shot.
Notice how inspire is a keyword but joust isnt? HMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm.
The joust thing is crap, not only because it’s adding a bunch more wild RNG to things, but because the person who calls the joust loses if it’s a draw (your card’s cost has to be greater than theirs). This means even if the mana curve of your and your opponent’s decks are identical, the chances of you winning jousts is much lower than 50/50. Maybe a 30-40% chance.
Mage, on the other hand, is getting ridiculously OP. Combine Maiden of the Lake, Coldarra Drake, and Fallen Hero = 20 targetable direct damage a turn by turn 10 just with the hero power.
Kvaldir Raider has a crazy OP Inspire. Play that with a Coldarra Drake and a Maiden of the Lake, and you’ve basically got an OTK.
Maiden, Coldarra and Kvaldir combo with the use of a Hero power I’m not too worried about. That doesn’t happen before turn 7, by which you have plenty of time to deal with them. And you’re never able to play them all in the same turn, barring some very specific set up, which gives you time to see the tactic coming by a mile away.
But I do fear the Inspire keyword is too powerful in comparison with all other abilities. I foresee all future decks to either run heavy with Inpsire cards, or silences to counter them.
Yes, I saw that. I expect that Blizzard might foresee that Inspire could spiral out of control and may intend to give out cards that have the effect of ‘Inspire cards don’t activate this turn’ or somesuch.
In place of Coldarra there is also the much cheaper (as well as neutral) Garrison Commander, to give you a quick double-pump +4/+4 to Kvaldir. It’s pretty wicked.
True, but that’s way less OP. It’s rather similar to the Warlock’s Floating Watcher, which isn’t that difficult to deal with either.
Except of course that the warlock has to damage himself to pump that. If you can deal with Kvaldir quickly that’s great, but if you can’t it can also get out of control really quickly - I’ve already seen this doing a few Tavern Brawls.
Just found a little Game of Thrones reference while playing the Tavern Brawl. 
Click the sound clip for “Play” as well as “Attack” on The Skeleton Knight.
The mage deck is WAY better than the ranger deck in this week’s brawl.
I agree that inspire is crazy good, but I’m not sure the theoretical combos are all that much to worry about. Hearthstone is full of combos that can get out of control if you let the board sit for too long.
Joust is clearly meant to provide tempo for slow, high-cost decks, but I’m not sure how it’ll work in theory. The bonuses you get aren’t *that *high off-curve, especially when one considers that you’re never going to get the bonuses all the time unless you’re playing against a super-aggro rush deck. In the tavern brawls I played, several matches were lost because a joust didn’t happen when it really needed to, and those decks are clearly designed so that the hunter will win the large majority of the joust draws.
I think the time it takes for animations to complete on a board with several Inspire cards is going to cause a lot of frustration for casual players and create more un-fun OTK decks for those who put in the time to learn them thoroughly.