One of my friends recently (today!) got me into Hearthstone, so if you want to beat up on a noob, PM me and we can add each other to our friends lists.
Doesn’t seem to be any worse than, say, warrior decks that have three or four cards all keying off of damage to minions.
The animation speed of the jousting mechanic annoys me. Yes, get on with it, I get it. Just flash me the cards.
In general, the animation speed is too slow. Sometimes in a complex moves it can add 20 seconds to completing the turn. And there’s a log of actions on the side in case you missed something anyway.
The mechanics are interesting, anyway. It’s pretty clear the thrust of this expansion is to re-empower slow decks against fast ones, which is probably needed. One unfortunate counter-productive design is that hunter is the class that probably uses its hero power the most, which empowers it too much with inspire. Maybe the hunter inspire cards aren’t that great - I haven’t looked too closely.
The Hunter inspire card (Brave Archer) has 1 health, and does not trigger unless your hand is empty.
Yes, I think that in general Inspire is going to be a much better keyword than Joust (Yes, yes, Joust isn’t technically a keyword. But it should be).
At least with the Brawl deck it’s not really possible to plan out one’s turn not knowing if you’ll get the joust effect or not. You seem to pay too much in stats/mana cost for the possibility of the Joust bonus. And there isn’t the same snowballing potential that Inspire has. Unless one can fit a ‘pure upside’ inspire card, such as King’s Elekk, into a deck I’m not sure they’ll see too much play once the meta settles down.
But Lock and Load is a way better card than I expected. Just don’t get too greedy with it.
After playing around a bit, I have to come back on my dismissal of the hunter Brawl deck. It is actually very playable if you get to know it a bit. I’ve been playing around a few games yesterday, and I think my win rate is above 90%. If you manage to get through the first three or four turns and manage to keep the board clear, it is very difficult for Medivh to win. The Joust mechanic can be pretty easily swung to your advantage. Just know what the low cost creatures in your deck are, and make sure that they are already in the board or part of your hand.
Lock and Load is an awesome card. Combined with the coin in turn four it can turn the table if you’re behind. King’s Elekk is a must have in your opening hand.
In general I think a Joust deck would avoid low cost creatures all together, and only rely on spells for the early game. Snake Trap, Animal Companion, Unleash the Hounds, Hunter’s Mark and both Freeze and Explosive Trap will take care of the first five rounds. After that your high cost minions can come out. I’m actually looking forward to trying it out.
Yeah, I agree. Although I discovered that if it gives you something (like charge), the charge minion becomes usable the moment it’s played, before the reveal animation. I actually thought I encountered a terrible bug for a moment because once it let me use charge on a guy even though it turned out I had lost the joust. But then I realized I also had a Tundra Rhino on the board, which gave me charge anyway.
I just played a match where I had that kind of opening, clearing Medivh board, and a few big guns in my hand, so I was feeling good.
He got a mind vision card from a spellslinger. Used it and took my acid maw. He’s a mage.
From a 30 - 12 hp lead, and a great bunch of big cards, I lost, thats to a maw, fireball combination that basically kills anything I could out.
Cruel Hearthstone. Cruel.
RNGesus giveth, RNGesus taketh away.
I must have received some of your luck, since I’ve had some really, really nice arena decks this week. I’m at a 5.5 win average compared to my normal 4. And the last draft took me to 9 wins, with crazy mech and dragon synergy.
I can’t wait for the new cards to hit! (and for non-GVG packs to be possible from arena)
So GT releases in 2 days - anyone get the 50 pack thing? I’m a total cheapass so I didn’t, but have been saving gold since the xpac was announced and am at over 3000 gold now. Enough for 30 packs, and I’m hoping that’ll be enough to stay competitive with the 50+ packers.
I like that with the reward chest thing at least there’s a reason to play ranked now other than trying to get the legend vanity card back. Highest rank this month only 15, but trying to push it a bit before GT releases and throws everything off.
I’m up to about 2000 gold, which I intend to spend on arenas after the new cards drop.
I wanted to do arenas, but the only problem is I don’t think they’re going to give you a choice on which type of card pack you get. My understanding is it’ll be random between classic, GvG, or GT. I might do a couple of arena runs and spend the rest on GT packs though.
I just hit rank 10 which, if the rumors are correct, is the minimum rank I need to get 2 gold commons and 1 gold rare. There’s no way I’m going to be able to hit rank 5 this month for the epic card.
The ladder has gotten a lot more competitive. I’d often get about this high on the ladder purely by doing quests, but it’s taken me 3 days to move from 12 to 10. And I’ve come to loathe Patron Warrior even more than Face Hunter.
I caved. I wasn’t planning on pre-ordering the packs and only rely on mu 3000+ gp I saved, but when checking to see if TGT was live yet the pre-order icon called out to me like a siren’s song. I feel dirty now.
A few months ago, I looked at my Blizzard transaction history and felt pretty dirty when I added up the dollars I’d spent on Hearthstone.
Like, “fetal position on the floor of the shower” levels of dirty.
No pre-order for me, thanks much.
I didn’t know arena packs would be random after. Not great at first but I think it’s the best in the long run than only being able to get the latest expansion cards (aside from being able to choose). I’ll still probably do arena mostly since I enjoy it most and it is very cost effective. I’ll just use my dust stockpile if there is a new deck that I really want to play. I’m curious to see how my win rate will change with the new cards.
I like the ranked rewards. It gives me an incentive to want to hit at least rank 5 each month. In the past I general didn’t bother trying ranked unless I felt like I would have enough time in the month to go for legend.
Arena reward packs are random now? FFS. What is so hard about the super obvious solution of awarding a pack-token and then going to the pack purchasing screen to choose your pack and redeem it? Or just letting you click the damn pack you want. They bothered to change the arena reward system but not to the obvious one we need.
20 packs and no legendaries! 
I bought 25 packs with gold, got 2 legendaries: Acidmaw and Skycap’n Kragg (neither very good, though you gotta love the Charrrrrrge). Of 125 cards, had to disenchant 29 for a total of 96 usable cards. I still have some gold leftover I’m using on arena.
I’d love a pack voucher, but Blizz just doesn’t want to do it. At least there’s a chance at Classic packs, I’m missing so many staples.
And at least for now Arena is easy compared to how it was during GVG/BRM. Or I’ve been crazy lucky. 3 runs, 6 win average. Which is 2 more than my normal. And all 3 TGT packs.