I went back to one of my old favorites for this brawl, Hunter Deathrattle. The Hat makes it even better as you can make some non-deathrattle cards get a +2/+2.
I won two out of three, but it’s too dependent on getting at least one Feign Death by the mid-game.
It is a lot of fun to play Sylvanas on turn 6, then give him a hat and then play two Feign Deaths on turn 7…
Okay, you just inspired me to try out my hat deck in the brawl - hats, baron riverdare, echoing ooze, djinni of zephyrs, feign death, lotsa deathrattle guys. Was going great until I got twisting nether’d and got stuck with ten hats in my hand, nothing to cast them on, and no way to draw anything else 
It’s my understanding reaching rank 20 is achievable by most anyone. Beyond a few more dusts from higher ranks what is the new player missing? They do get to use novel cards in brawls most weeks. And in arena when they get 150g. I don’t see the issue, yet.
I’m doing quite well using a Murlocadin deck for the brawl… plus it’s pretty fun when Anyfin Can Happen.
Barriers of entry make games less appealing for new players. “Anybody can play brawls and get to rank 20” is cold comfort to a player who might be eyeing a control warrior or dragon priest deck full of legendaries, epics, and scattered cards from 60 dollars worth of solo adventure packs.
And? Do you think it’s in Blizzard’s long term interests to put deflationary pressure on the value of their game? Hearthstone makes a lot of money. Why would people buy now if they thought the packs would be heavily discounted in the future?
Blizzard does want new players. But they also want people who will buy. The game isn’t pay to win as most every reward in the game and practically every card in the game can be acquired with time.
Let’s say that the costs to entry were cheaper all that would do is shift the goalposts of what the new player was facing. It would still be extraordinarily hard for the new player to go 12-0 in arena or hit legend quickly. So having a realistic goal and a good time is what matters. I think the biggest issue are the clowns who farm near rank 20 for golden portraits.
Frankly I’m not sure about the high barriers of entry thing. I think having few cards to start with is a GOOD thing - there’s a reason why MOBAs gate the number of free champions, decision paralysis is a real thing.
I remember the first time I opened my collection, and the basic cards, just the basic cards, almost overwhelmed me. There was a time where I mixed up Demolisher and Mad Bomber. I distinctly remember expecting 3 bombs to come out of that guy every turn.
I’m not sure that it’s holding new players back either. At the tail end of the last season, I was around rank 13, and every few games I was facing someone who was obviously new - playing cards like Chillwind Yeti, Razorfen Hunter, Stormwind Champion - and the thing was, they were obviously good players, and sometimes I even lost to them!
If I started playing the game now, I think I’d quit. You have to suffer through months of going nowhere to try to build up any sort of options to even have remotely the same options as other people.
That’s what the default decks are for. The game should go out of its way to ease players into the game, but progress is far, far slower than is necessary to achieve that goal. Worse, some of the most extreme examples of cards that don’t incur any decision paralysis are not Basic cards, they’re Legendaries. There are only three types of decks that don’t run Doctor Boom and play him at the soonest opportunity: decks that win before turn 7, decks played by people who don’t own Doctor Boom and decks that have no Big Game Hunter targets to exploit the fact that everyone else is running a Doctor Boom but you aren’t. Everyone else, and it’s the simplest deckbuilding decision combined with the simplest gameplay decision you’ll ever make.
The thing is, as a new player, you don’t even know about boom. You’re just looking at the cards in your collection when you’re making a deck (and new players always want to make their own decks), and Raid Leader is the most OP shit ever.
I will agree that progress is a bit slow if you’re free to play, but hey, blizz has to earn money too. Just buy 40 packs, you’ll be a lot happier. It’s not as if F2P players can’t rank up as good as paying players either - I hit rank 10 with a F2P control priest a while ago in this thread.
I do think that one thing they could do for new players is to have a discounted “mix” bundle. So lets say 20 packs of Classic, GVG and TGT each, at a 20% discount. It wouldn’t benefit the long time players (since we probably have everything from classic anyway), but would help the new players a lot, rather than having them buy either 40x3 or lose the bulk discount.
imho, i don’t think card collecting is as big an issue as the lack of a new player friendly multiplayer playground. arena is fair, but limited due to its cost. casual is often not, and good luck wandering into rank near the beginning of the month. regulars are praising tavern brawl as a good place to complete those 5-win quests with their off characters - imagine how much worse it is for new players with a small deck collection?
i wonder if it’s a good idea to take the size of your deck collection as a factor for matchups.
I just started a F2P account and I win about 50% of my ranked games using Druid. I’m never getting past Rank 20 and it’s not because I don’t know how to play reasonably well.
Guys like Trump can do remarkably well playing F2P but it’s fairly obvious that a solid deck means more than skill. In general, this is only going to get worse as more expansions come out and decks get even more refined in comparison to basic decks.
Finally said “screw it”, dusted all but the very best of my cards for Druid and Rogue, threw away a few semi-useful epics like Far Sight, dusted my Mimiron’s head… And now I have Dr. Boom. And he’s just as dumb on my side of the table as the other side. I also bought blackrock a week or so back (mostly for Firewalker), and it’s hilarious just how much of the Dragon Priest deck is contained within just that one expansion. So I built a dragon priest deck. After all, I already had one twilight guardian, lightbomb, and a few other nifty cards…
So great, now I finally have a deck that has a lategame. And it’s awesome. 
So much removal, Boom, Nefarian, Chromaggus, whatever I steal with Entomb (got a Tirion Fordring last game, now that was funny), backed up by Holy Novas, an Excavated Evil (I found a lot of things at the 3-damage mark problematic).
Yeah, it’s fine for players to be slowly introduced to mechanics - that’s a good thing. But any F2P player is going to hit a point where their understanding of the meta leads them to start looking at build choices, and that leads to an understanding of the timeframes involved in building a collection.
Any F2P game needs to have a reasonable gate when we’re talking about how long it will take to build up to a respectable position. Hearthstone has introduced lots of new cards (which is great), but hasn’t done anything to mitigate the gap that widens every time they do that (which is not great).
Let’s look at the adventure packs. Every adventure has a couple of cards that are extremely unlikely to ever fall out of the meta altogether. Naxxramas, for example, has Sludge Belcher, Death’s Bite, Mad Scientist, Zombie Chow, Nerubian Egg, etc. These are all really, really good cards!
So let’s say a brand new player decides that he wants to start by saving and unlocking the solo adventures. There are 14 wings at 700 gold a piece. Assuming a casual player is averaging 60 gold a day (40 from quests and 20 more from six wins), that’s still six months, less a few days for gold rewards for completing newbie achievements. And that assumes that no gold is being spent on arenas or decks! No GvG, no Grand Tournament. Just one classic pack a week from tavern brawls. Even if that new player is being a bit more careful and selects half those wings, we’re still talking three months. Lord knows how long it would take for a new player to earn all the rares from the three main sets - let alone even a respectable portion of the epics.
There’s a broad difference between “pay to win” and “pay to compete,” sure, but a “pay to compete” model still isn’t great. Any free game relies on a steady influx of new players to populate the brackets.
Compare Hearthstone to Blizzard’s other free game: Heroes of the Storm. They recently upped the free rotation to 10 heroes at any given time, and a casual player can easily buy a new hero every week or two. Is it extremely difficult to earn every hero? Yeah, sure, but there is no universe where you have to have all of them, and there’s no reliance on lucky draws. You don’t have to wait on a lucky Doomhammer drop in order to make certain Thrall builds viable. Once you own Thrall, everything else comes down to player skill. Meanwhile, HotS is pulling in tons of money because I see premium skins in every single match (I even spent ten bucks myself over the winter sale).
Hearthstone is a CCG, so of course they need to leverage the collectible part of that equation. I just hope they do some stuff soon to keep the gap between free players and paid ones reasonable.
Were I in charge, I would start devaluing the classic packs. Every x amount of gold or dollars spent in the game should just earn you classic packs for free. Spend 700 gold on Naxxramus? Have some classic packs. Buy 10 Grand Tournament packs with real money? Throw some classics in there, too. Whenever the next big expansion comes out, do the same for GvG. And so on.
I really like Hearthstone and think it’s a great example of a CCG, but without some systemic changes in how they deal with newbie gating I don’t see the game going the distance.
Help me out. How the fuck do I beat an Anyfin pally that has healers, Doomsayers, and Equality/Consecration?
The thing (I think, I’ve only played against it 3 times, getting beaten soundly every time), is that to make Anyfin a game ender is that you only need like 5 other murlocs (bluegill warriors to charge, a couple warleaders and Murkeye, maybe a tidecaller for fun), and you can load up on removal/card draws cards.
I’ve lost with a Ramp Druid and a dragon priest (albeit without Ysera), but once it gets to Round 10, it’s game over. And unless I draw right and he/she draws wrong on removals, I get my ass handed to me.
As best I can tell, the best way to do it is by removing the murlocs from the board without killing them. Most Anyfin decks run a relatively few number of murlocs to maximize the Anyfin draw. So Hex, Polymorph, and Tinkmaster Overspark are good.
With a priest, you could try Cabal Shadowpriest/Shadow Madness into a Recombobulator. You’ve also got Entomb for removing a murloc into your own deck (just don’t play it when you draw it or it will go into the Anyfin pool).
The other way is to run some crappy murlocs into your own deck so as to flood the “resurrect pool” with bad choices, but that still won’t work if Anyfin drops an Old Murk-eye and a warchief.
Entomb will not only remove his win condition but you can also use the captured card against him when he plays Anyfin.
More help. How does Reno Jackson work? I thought if you had two of the same card in your deck, it wouldn’t. But I just got beat by a deck with two Reno Jacksons (duplicate secret), and two flamewalkers. I don’t get it.
When they say “in your deck” they mean “still in your draw pile.”
So a player might decide to put a few pairs into the deck and just make sure one of the two gets drawn before Reno goes out. Duplicate secrets don’t affect things at all since they never go back into the deck.
So the hand doesn’t count as the deck either. Got it.
Seems to make Reno a meta changer.