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Hearthstone Tavern Brawl now live, first impressions

by: Rob - posted: 6/18/2015 6:45:00 AM
More On: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Blizzard's free to play card game Hearthstone saw a nice little update this week. Full details are in the patch notes on their official site, but the highlights:

  • A new game mode - Tavern Brawl
  • New heroes available for purchase for Warrior, Hunter, and Mage
  • Ability to assign cardbacks to each deck
  • And various bug fixes

First a word on the new heroes - they're really nothing more than new skins. Actually they are a bit less than that, they're really just new portraits and come in at $9.99 each with no bundle and no option to use in game gold. The new heroes have the same hero ability and use the same cards as the alternates in their respective classes. It's a bit silly and if you actually come up across a player using them then you can safely assume you're playing someone with more money than sense. It's a cash grab by Blizzard to prey on these types and is a little shameful to me. What the update is also missing is the ability to add new deck slots. The community has been agitating for this for a while but still we wait... On the new hero skin evidence, I am willing to bet it will come but as a pay only option so Blizzard can further monetize their property.

But the real highlight is the Tavern Brawl. Tavern Brawl is now open worldwide and pits two of the bosses of Blackrock Mountain against each other, Nefarian and Ragnaros. The brawl is only open through the weekend, and then a new challenge will open up next week. Winning a game gets you a free pack and it's quite fun. Both of the bosses are ridiculously powerful, but Nefarian much more so. I haven't lost a game yet as Nefarian and am only winning maybe a quarter of my games as Ragnarok. The problem is Nefarian starts with a 4 mana advantage to Ragnarok's 2/6 axe. Once you lose the axe, you get Ragnarok's full hero power to deal 8 damage to a random enemy but you're fighting against the clock as Nefarian can just dump high mana minions on you each turn with that mana advantage. But it's nice to know everyone is playing the same decks with the same disadvantages for just this temporary window. So even though you know you're up against it, it feels more like a challenge than an unfair advantage (unlike that feeling you get when you meet one of those pay to win decks with 6 legendaries in regular play, you know what I'm talking about).  

Hearthstone is available for PC, Mac, and mobile.