Legend of the Innkeeper : A Hearthstone Podcast for Casual Players

News

Expansion goes live on Thursday, August 10th

Free single-player missions unlock each week until all Missions are unlocked.

The Prologue and The Lower Citadel are available at launch.

Earn a free random Death Knight hero card just for facing the Lich King in the Prologue. Earn a card pack after completing each Mission section, for a total of 3. (Which should mean that there are 3 missions.)

Defeat the final Mission with all nine classes to earn a new Paladin hero, Prince Arthas

Arena Rewards: Reduced variance of rewards in Arena. Reward bags will no longer contain single, non-Golden common cards.

Arena Draft change: The first two sets of cards in a draft are more likely to include synergy-based cards.

Several cards were updated:

Mistress of Pain and Wickerflame Burnbristle now use the Lifesteal keyword.

NERF: Dreadsteed: “Deathrattle: At the end of the turn, summon a Dreadsteed.” was “Deathrattle: Summon a Dreadsteed”

Others had card text tweaked for clarity and simplification.

With the patch today, several emotes were discovered celebrating Pirate’s Day.

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews:

Emails:

Website:

Hi guys,

Took a year off from Hearthstone and came back and found you guys still here

Does the 50 pack pre-order stop once the expansion goes live?

If you could bring 1 card back from a wild set, what would it be?

Thanks

Kiwi Al

Discord:

Qualified for dutch championship with 1k prize pool!

Twitter:  Wayne –  @XcMtbGamer @LotiPodcast on release day, all LOTI listeners should post their legendaries & best pack?

Facebook Shoutout: Dave – Do you guys find that you have a better win rate at different times of the day? I don’t have the stats to back it up but it feels like I win wayyyyy more during the day. Too bad I have an 8-5 that prohibits laddering most days.

Outro

That does it for this episode.  You can email the show at [email protected].  You can also visit our website at legendoftheinnkeeper.com where we will post the show notes with the episode that has links to all the information we discussed.

Our YouTube channel is www.legendoftheinnkeeper.com/YouTube

You can follow us on Twitter

LOTI Podcast – @LOTIpodcast.  

Espo – @Xcmtbgamer

You can support the show through Patreon at :  www.patreon.com/Legendoftheinnkeeper

Be sure to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

Until next show, Happy gaming!

Credits:

Music by James Marantette – https://soundcloud.com/james-marantette

Liked it? Take a second to support Legend of the Innkeeper on Patreon!

News

Ben Brode releases a new rap, Arthas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-KU-_-CtJw)

Wild Sets have returned to the Hearthstone store! You can now buy through the website, the following sets for REAL Money.

Curse of Naxxramas (full adventure for $24.99)

Goblins vs Gnomes (card packs for $2.99)

Blackrock Mountain (full adventure for $24.99)

The Grand Tournament (card packs for $2.99)

The League of Explorers (full adventure for $19.99)

Card Pack changes are also live now.

No longer will you receive duplicate Legendary cards

You will receive a guaranteed Legendary within the first 10 card packs opened of a new set.

The Starter Pack Legendary also goes by the non-dupe rule.

Espo Mode

Showdown at Blackrock Mountain

This was the first ever Tavern Brawl

How it Works

Queue up and receive either Nefarian or Ragnaros as your hero.

Ragnaros starts with 60 Health. His hero power is Molten Rage when initially summoned, which switches to DIE, INSECT! after Sulfuras has been destroyed.

Nefarian starts with 30 Health and 30 Armor. His hero power is Wild Magic.

Each deck contains very special cards with unique playstyles.

Nefarian has an early game advantage in that he starts with extra mana crystals (4) and he can drop some great minions. Tons of RNG through his hero power though, so hope for the best!

Ragnaros is weaker early game but if you get to turn 6 after always using your weapon, you get an amazing hero power. Make sure you mulligan for cheap cards to help!

Knights of the Frozen Throne

Ghastly Conjurer (Mage)

4 mana, 2/6 minion, Battlecry: Add a ‘Mirror Image’ spell to your hand.

Leeching Poison (Rogue)

2 mana spell, Give your weapon Lifesteal.

Sindragosa (Mage Legendary)

8 mana, 8/8 Dragon, Battlecry: Summon two 0/1 Frozen Champions.

Frozen Champions (Mage Tokens)

1 mana, 0/1 minion, Deathrattle: Add a random Legendary minion to your hand.

Coldwraith (Mage)

3 mana, 3/4 minion, Battlecry: If an enemy is Frozen, draw a card.

Bring It On! (Warrior)

2 mana spell, Gain 10 Armor. Reduce the Cost of minions in your opponent’s hand by (2).

Voodoo Hexxer (Shaman)

5 mana, 2/7 minion, Taunt. Freeze any character damaged by this minion.

Bearshark (Hunter)

3 mana, 4/3 Beast, Can’t be targeted by spells or Hero Powers.

Hadronox (Druid Legendary)

9 mana, 3/7 Beast, Deathrattle: Summon your Taunt minions that died this game.

Fatespinner (Druid)

5 mana, 5/3 minion, Choose a Deathrattle (Secretly) – Deal 3 damage to all minions; or Give them +2/+2

Abominable Bowman (Hunter)

7 mana, 6/7 minion, Deathrattle: Summon a random friendly Beast that died this game.

Bolvar, Fireblood (Paladin Legendary)

5 mana, 1/7 minion, Divine Shield. After a friendly minion loses Divine Shield, gain +2 Attack.

Light’s Sorrow (Paladin)

4 mana, 1/4 Weapon, After a friendly minion loses Divine Shield, gain +1 Attack.

Corpsetaker (Neutral)

4 mana, 3/3 minion, Battlecry: Gain Taunt if your deck has a Taunt minion. Repeat for Divine Shield, Lifesteal, Windfury.

Bonemare (Neutral)

7 mana, 5/5 minion, Battlecry: Give a friendly minion +4/+4 and Taunt.

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews:

Emails:

Twitter: Matt ~ @LotiPodcast @XcMtbGamer Just went over 8,000 gold today. Been saving since Un’goro release.

Facebook Shoutout:

Outro

That does it for this episode.  You can email the show at [email protected].  You can also visit our website at legendoftheinnkeeper.

News

Clarification: Guaranteed Legendary Explanation

So the clarification is, if you opened at least one pack in each expansion, you will not be guaranteed a legendary.

A second detail is that if you have NOT opened any packs within an expansion, once the patch rolls out, you get a guaranteed legendary within your first 10 packs of that expansion (per expansion).

Hope this helps. Love the show.

~ Noah

Avanties: The change to packs to guarantee a legendary in the first 10 packs of a set only counts if you have NEVER opened a pack of that set before.  So what this means is if a new player starts playing Hearthstone after the patch and has NEVER EVER opened a booster pack they will be guaranteed a legendary in the first 10 packs of each set: classic, whispers, mean streets, un’goro, and frozen throne.

Making of the Lich King’s Armor – created by Adam Savage’s Tested.com team – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyYeMQ3otZI

New Knights of the Frozen Throne comic #1 – Undeath conquers all – https://comic.playhearthstone.com/en-us/undeath-conquers-all

Knights of the Frozen Throne comic #2 – Forest for the weary – https://comic.playhearthstone.com/en-us/forest-for-the-weary

Knights of the Frozen Throne comic #3 – Freedom – https://comic.playhearthstone.com/en-us/freedom

In an interview with Shacknews, Mike Donais confirmed that you will be able to use the Death Knight Hero cards in the Arena.

Blizzard confirmed that there was a bug that happened with patch 8.4 that caused some players to have received one fewer Epic or Legendary card than they should have when opening packs. They have identified the issue and expect it to be resolved next week. They will be reaching out to all affected players in the next few weeks with details on their resolution plan.  (source)

Apparently Ben Brode is going to be bringing a new rap to us on July 31st?  “Arthas”

Knights of the Frozen Throne

Card Reveals

Ticking Abomination (Neutral)

4 mana, 5/6 minion, Deathrattle: Deal 5 damage to your minions.

Plague Scientist (Rogue)

3 mana, 2/3 minion, Combo: Give a friendly minion Poisonous.

Ice Breaker (Shaman)

3 mana, 1/3 weapon, Destroy any Frozen minion damaged by this.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel (Warlock Legendary)

5 mana, 1/6 minion, Lifesteal. Has +1 Attack for each card you’ve discarded this game.

Blood Razor (Warrior)

4 mana, 2/2 weapon, Battlecry and Deathrattle: Deal 1 damage to all minions.

Prince Taldaram (Neutral Legendary)

3 mana, 3/3 minion, Battlecry: If your deck has no 3-Cost cards, transform into a 3/3 copy of a minion.

Nerubian Unraveler (Neutral)

6 mana, 5/5 minion, Spells cost (2) more.

Mountainfire Armor (Warrior)

3 mana, 4/3 minion, Deathrattle: If it’s your opponent’s turn, gain 6 armor.

Professor Putricide (Hunter Legendary)

4 mana, 5/4 minion, After you play a Secret, put another random Hunter Secret into play.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DFn4CyOUwAAZYZW.jpg:large

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews: 0

Emails: See Earlier

Twitter:  Wayne –  I’ve got another 80 gold friend quest.  I’ll be on later tonight. That will put me 5000+ gold & sitting on 3200+ dust #EspoMode #LOTI

Facebook Shoutout:  Brad – 3 down and 7 to go got it with my elemental evolve deck...

News

Caverns Below has been adjusted – now requires 5 minions to be played, instead of 4.

Offline status functionality might be coming in the near future.  In the latest patch, there are some new updates that refer to offline mode.  Additionally, Jeff Kaplan with the Overwatch team has discussed this recently saying that they want to offer this feature but they have to coordinate with the other teams to make it happen. Maybe this is Team 5’s integration portion.

More data mining discoveries:

Frost Festival coming up that will last 3 weeks

Each week during the festival you will get a free arena run

Each week you will be able to earn a Frozen Throne card pack if you play 3 arena games

Everyone will start with a free win

Preorder is available now – $49.99 – 50 packs and a card back

The Lich King promotions

The Lich King interviews with Ben Brode

The Lich King takes over Tempo Storm and rebrands as The Frozen Pwn

The Lich King opens a new business : Ice Cream Citadel

Attendees to San Diego Comic Con on July 20-July 23rd will be able to get ice cream/gelato at the Ice Cream Citadel

Ben Brode does a Reddit AMA (source)   https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6nc1zz/well_met_im_ben_brode_the_game_director_on/

No card spoilers until July 24th

No plans for console support at this time.

More details on making more stats available to players will hopefully come later this year.

Average game time is 7.5 minutes.

The nice part about all the heroes becoming Death Knights, is that they were able to make awesome hero powers and not just one.

No plans for content from other Blizzard titles in the game outside of Tavern Brawls or Card Backs

Alt Heroes

Druid and Warlock hero skins will happen, but no spoilers yet.

Still working on getting Tyrande out to all the regions.

Bringing Tyrande back to regions where she’s already been, isn’t something they feel they need to do right now.

Cards

Ice Block matches some red flags for card that maybe shouldn’t be in Standard forever.

No Legendary Totem is an oversight.  Will consider this.

Stonetusk Boar, in Ben’s opinion, is the most guilty card when it comes to limiting future mechanics.  Mike Donais says that Preparation, Innervate and Malygos are also mechanic limiters.

Expansions

The reason for delay between announcement and card reveals is due to feedback that they were seeing that said hype was dying towards the release of the expansion due to the spoiler period being too long.

Currently finalizing design for this year’s third expansion, working on the first set for next year and brainstorming ideas for the second 2018 set.

Free to Play

Players are still able to compete at a high level without spending money. But they are listening to feedback.

Lots of opportunities to earn packs for the new set in upcoming events.

Game Modes

They have a design that they are excited to try out for the new ranked experience. An announcement will come once they know how it changes through the actual implementation.

Spectator mode is a place where they can make improvements.

Card rotations won’t happen outside of the Hearthstone new year.

Wild cards won’t get a reduction in dust cost. Bringing these cards back for sale should make it more accessible.

Details to come about changes to arena rewards.

Nothing to say about tournament mode right now.

Experimentation

They have considered making a free set of cards ...

News

Until July 10th, the bonus packs for buying Un’Goro packs continues. 30% free with purchase.

The Caverns Below is being nerfed.

Causing too much aggro to be played. They want to see more control.

An announcement about the announcement was made. July 6th we’ll learn more about the upcoming expansion.  Ben Brode said on Twitter, “This is going to be awesome”

Ben Brode and Mike Donais hosted a Q&A

Expansion will be released in August

Missions will tell the story of the expansion.  They will be free to all players.

We’ll be seeing Arena balancing in Patch 8.4 (Next Patch) with small pull chance changes

Ladder changes will not be coming with the new expansion, but the new system is going good.

They had some whacky ideas that were dismissed, like Lich King vs Battle Pets and Warcraft Babies

Wild sets will be returning for purchase.  The will be available through the Battle.net website and not in the in-game store (https://battle.net/shop/product/game/hearthstone ).

They will be available at the ‘regular’ price

Curse of Naxxramas

Goblins vs Gnomes

Blackrock Mountain

The Grand Tournament

The League of Explorers

Knights of the Frozen Throne

Hero Cards 9 class 1 neutral (Lich King)

New Keyword “Lifesteal”

More Deathrattle cards

Built in Free Adventure that takes you through ICC and ends with a battle with the Lich King and gets you the Neutral Hero card Lich King

Cards will begin to be revealed in July

Pre-purchase now and get card back and 50 packs for $49.99

https://battle.net/shop/product/hearthstone-knights-of-the-frozen-throne

Espo Mode Ragnaros’ Fire Festival

Defeat your opponent, but if you feed an ever-growing, minion eating, tiny Fire Lord, there may be a reward in it for you!

Getting Better

Hints and Tips

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews:

Emails:

Twitter: Matt :@XcMtbGamer I’m having some #FunGuarateed in the tavern brawl

Facebook Shoutout:

Outro

That does it for this episode.  You can email the show at [email protected].  You can also visit our website at legendoftheinnkeeper.com where we will post the show notes with the episode that has links to all the information we discussed.

Our YouTube channel is www.legendoftheinnkeeper.com/YouTube

You can follow us on Twitter

LOTI Podcast – @LOTIpodcast.  

Espo – @Xcmtbgamer

You can support the show through Patreon at :  www.patreon.com/Legendoftheinnkeeper

Be sure to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

Until next show, Happy gaming!

Credits:

Music by James Marantette – https://soundcloud.com/james-marantette

Liked it? Take a second to support Legend of the Innkeeper on Patreon!

News

Card Pack Changes   Ben Brode video

Bonus Packs with every Journey to Un’Goro bundle until July 10th – Buy the following and get the following:

$9.99     7 + 2 = 9

$19.99  15 + 5 = 20

$49.99  40 + 12 = 52

$69.99  60 + 18 = 78

Pack pricing is also here including other countries: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack

Cool map of Azeroth with Hearthstone expansions overlay – https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/6jje9u/a_map_of_azeroth_labelled_by_hearthstone/

Fireside Gatherings – New Co-Op versus Nefarian

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/fireside-gatherings/blog/20838071/july-2017-fireside-brawl-tag-team-6-21-17

Espo Mode

Spiders, Spiders, EVERYWHERE!

“Spiders have overrun everything, including your deck! Whatever class you play, your deck will be TEEMING with Webspinners.”

Getting Better

Un’Goro Paladin

Name

Rarity

Type

Adaptation

Adapt a friendly minion.

Common

Spell

1

Dinosize

Set a minion’s Attack and Health to 10.

Epic

Spell

8

Hydrologist

Battlecry: Discover a Secret.

Common

Minion

2

2

2

Lightfused Stegodon

Battlecry: Adapt your Silver Hand Recruits.

Rare

Minion

4

3

4

Lost in the Jungle

Summon two 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits.

Common

Spell

1

Primalfin Champion

Deathrattle: Return any spells you cast on this minion to your hand.

Epic

Minion

2

1

2

Spikeridged Steed

Give a minion +2/+6 and Taunt. When it dies, summon a Stegodon.

Rare

Spell

6

News

Announced today, Twitch Prime benefits (source)

Immediately you get a Golden Overwatch Loot Box, which guarantees a Legendary item for one of your heroes.

Later you will get 10 loot boxes for Overwatch.

Later in the year, there will be similar offers for both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm.

Espo Mode

Cart Crash at the Crossroads (again for the 4th time)

How it Works

Click on Tavern Brawl and pick the class you want to play.

You will receive a randomly generated deck which at this time contains 19 cards (11 class,  8 neutral).

After you mulligan, you will be asked to pick a second class via a discover-like menu. You can’t pick your class a second time.

11 more cards are then added to your deck.

Getting Better

Hunter

Hasn’t fared well with Un’Goro overall. Really only one deck is keeping the Hunter in the conversation and that’s the Midrange Hunter. However, Disguised Toast just took a F2P Hunter deck to Legend.  (He experimented with many changes from 25-5)  http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/841455-disguisedtoasts-f2p-hunter-deck-updated-with-video

### Grish’s Midrange Hunter

# Class: Hunter

# Format: Standard

#

# 2x (1) [Alleycat]

# 2x (1) [Hungry Crab]

# 1x (1) [Tracking]

# 2x (2) [Crackling Razormaw]

# 1x (2) [Dire Wolf Alpha]

# 1x (2) [Flare]

# 1x (2) [Golakka Crawler]

# 2x (2) [Kindly Grandmother]

# 2x (2) [Scavenging Hyena]

# 2x (3) [Animal Companion]

# 2x (3) [Eaglehorn Bow]

# 2x (3) [Kill Command]

# 1x (3) [Rat Pack]

# 2x (3) [Unleash the Hounds]

# 2x (4) [Houndmaster]

# 2x (5) [Nesting Roc]

# 1x (5) [Tundra Rhino]

# 2x (6) [Savannah Highmane]

#

AAECAR8GuwWAB9kHlwjsuwLkwgIMqAK1A7sD6wfbCe0JgQr+DLm0Auq7AtnCAo7DAgA=

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

# http://www.vicioussyndicate.com/deck-library/hunter-decks/midrange-hunter/grishs-midrange-hunter/

I also played around with Kibler’s Midrange hunter which comes with Swamp King Dred.

AAECAR8EjQGQwwKTwwKWwwINqAK1A+sH7Qm4rQK5tALquwLsuwKmwQLZwgKGwwKJwwKOwwIA

Cards

[Crackling Razormaw] – 2 mana, 3/2 Beast, Battlecry: Adapt a friendly Beast.

[Dinomancy] – 2 mana spell, Your Hero Power becomes ‘Give a Beast +2/+2.’

[Grievous Bite] – 2 mana spell, Deal 2 damage to a minion and 1 damage to adjacent ones.

[Jeweled Macaw] – 1 mana, 1/1 Beast, Battlecry: Add a random Beast to your hand.

[Raptor Hatchling] – 1 mana, 2/1 Beast, Deathrattle: Shuffle a 4/3 Raptor into your deck.

[Stampede] – 1 mana spell, Each time your play a Beast this turn, add a random Beast to your hand.

[Swamp King Dred] – 7 mana, 9/9 Legendary Beast, After your opponent plays a minion, attack it.

[Terrorscale Stalker] – 3 mana, 3/3 minion, Battlecry: Trigger a friendly minion’s Deathrattle.

[Tol’vir Warden] – 5 mana, 3/ 5 minion, Battlecry: Draw two 1-Cost minions from your deck.

[The Marsh Queen] – 1 mana Quest – Quest: Play seven 1-Cost minions. Reward: Queen Carnassa.

Queen Carnassa –  5 mana, 8/8 minion, Battlecry: Shuffle 15 Raptors into your deck.

Carnassa’s Brood – 1 mana, 3/2 minion, Battlecry: Draw a card.

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews: 0

Emails: 0

YouTube:  

LittleDeadpool  ·Hi there, noob player that use to play Magic. I started playing a long time ago but quit because I wasnR...

News:

Disguised Toast gets banned for 4 days for exploiting

Apparently someone shared a bug with DT that involved doing something that caused your opponent to rope indefinitely in wild. Then if you closed the client and opened it back up you got a free win.  He tried it in stream to see if it worked in Standard

Bug where you could survive with Armor at 0 HP has been hotfixed.  (source)

Latest Update is live:

Deck Importing – It’s now possible to copy and import Hearthstone decklists.

Copy a deck by selecting the hero portrait at the top in the collection and press the copy button

If you copy a decklist, Hearthstone will recognize it and ask if you want to import it.

Questing with Friends – Most quests can now be completed during Friendly Challenges with friends from your friend’s list.

June cardback added – The Magic of Dalaran

When viewing “Pick a Replacement” from a deck recipe or imported decklist, the ghosted card on the left will now take you directly to Crafted mode.

Golden cards and non-golden cards share a same slot in a decklist.

Ranked wins now go beyond 500 and they updated to show your numbers prior to the update.

Alternate Heroes, like Maiev, will now have golden borders once you get to 500 wins for that Class.

You can drag a golden card out of your Arena deck to “de-goldenize” it.

Deathwing and Bloodmage Thalnos now have entry animations.

Improved the cancel process when casting spells on mobile.  It’s now easier and clearer to do so.

After more than 3 years of playing, Kripp presses the button to disenchant all his extra cards.  Ended up with 662,075 dust!  However, when he pressed the button the game client crashed. His original goal was to save up enough dust to craft an entire golden collection. But with the size of the new expansions, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to do this completely without spending tons of money.  So he decided to just go ahead and press the button.  The interesting thing is that the client shows 659,77 before he started.  Blizzard never anticipated anyone having more than 99,999 dust.

Shaman

In recent weeks we’ve seen an increase in popularity with the Shaman class.  Currently there are really 3 different types of decks that are quite popular.  Those are the Elemental Shaman, Midrange Shaman and the Token Shaman.  Shaman has benefited quite a bit after Un’Goro with the instability of the meta  Un’Goro has created one of the most diverse use of decks across all the classes that we have not seen in the past. In fact, most decks have viable counters preventing them from completely rolling over the rest.

The Token Shaman continues to rise however the competition has started taking notice and the counters are starting to slow its dominance.  The Token Shaman is so strong right now, that it was quite popular at the America’s Playoffs and Kuonet qualified to China using it.  The deck list itself is interesting because just about every version uses the same cards.  There are a few variations but the core list is very good.

The Midrange Shaman is much more diverse and it appears to have started shifting over to more of a Spirit Echo Jade defensive build.

So that brings us to a point of looking more closely at the deck itself and what Un’Goro cards drive this new build.

Standard Token Evolve Shaman

2 x Bloodsail Corsair

2 x Evolve

2 x Fire Fly (Un’Goro)

1 x Patches the Pirate

2 x Devolve

2 x Flametongue Totem

2 x Jade Claws

2 x Malestrom Portal

2 x Primalfin Totem

2 x Mana Tide Totem

2 x Stonehill Defender

2 x Jade Lightning

2 x Bloodlust

2 x Dopplegangster

1 x Aya Blackpaw

2 x Thing from Below

Deck String: AAECAaoIApG8ApS9Ag6BBOUH8AeTCfqqAvuqAqC2Aoe8AtG8Ava9Avm...

News

Ben Brode has been commenting on Reddit and Twitter lately about a variety of topics.  Here are some of the highlights (source).

New Player Experience – “generally agree the ranked experience for new players is bad. We are sorting through several solutions right now that have various pros and cons, and will update as we have more to share.”

The positive side he says is that the win rates for new players went from ~25% to almost 50% since launch.  The downside is that new players get too confident and switch from casual to ranked way sooner than they used to and get crushed.

Q: You aren’t doing new players any favors by force feeding them garbage cards.  A: “I think you are assuming that improving players’ decks will give them a higher win rate.” Basically as long as they are matching up players with other new players, they will have a win rate around 50%.  The upside of them starting out with ‘garbage’ cards is that they feel progression and increased power as they play in the beginning of the game.  The early progression is what excites them.

Q: The second thing I have a real problem with is the level 20 requirement for Tavern Brawl.  A: “The reason we put that in there is because Tavern Brawl is weird.”  It’s hard to understand, might have to have more complete decks, and it’s best to have a solid understanding of the game before introducing crazy mode.  It doesn’t take long to get to level 20 and you learn a lot along the way.

Q: Are you still planning other changes to ranked to make the grind from 17 back to 5 less tedious?  “We are definitely still planning more ranked changes.”

Q: Why give out a free card? (Fight Promoter)  A: It’s fun to do things that are surprising.  It was something we could do fairly easily.  “We have some bigger (and smaller) events planned… we’re just getting warmed up!”

Q: Why Fight Promoter specifically?

It inspires different kinds of decks

It’s an epic

It might be fun for players to think about how to make it work

It’s a neutral

Many players might not have it

Update to upcoming Wild Tournament Qualifications (source)

How the Blizzard launcher asks players to play in specific regions caused some anger and confusion.

Areas affected: Australia, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam

Aratil from Blizzard posted an update.

They are going to review on June 1st the top players in the “Asia” May Wild in-game ladder, removing players whose country of residence on their Battle.net account is not one of the countries listed as “Asia-Pacific”.  Then extend invitations to the top 64.

Then looking at the “Americas”, remove all players that already have had in invitation extended to them from “Asia-Pacific”.  Then extend invitations to those top 64.

Espo Mode

A Peek To The Past

Only Basic and Classic cards allowed

No Legendaries or Epics allowed

Reviews and Emails

iTunes Reviews: 0

Emails: 1

Distinguished gentlemen,

I have a question regarding the dusting of golden cards. Espo makes it no secret that he employs this strategy to boost his dust count.

I understand that strategy if you want to save up dust to craft a legendary, epic, or rare card that you need for a deck you want to try out.

What I don’t understand is when he says he dusts the gold card and crafts two of the regular versions. I think he said this about the free golden Volcanosaur we all received on Un’Goro eve. The dust gained by disenchanting a golden rare (100) is equal to the crafting cost o...

News

HCT Spring Championship will be in Shanghai from July 7 through July 9.  Top four players from each region’s Spring Playoff will qualify for a spot in this championship.  Total prize pool for the Spring Championship is $250,000.

Spring Playoffs have been announced, including locations.  (Blizzard Announcement)

Europe – May 20-21

Americas – May 27-28

Asia-Pacific – June 2-3

Mike Donais and Peter Whalen interview with IGN.  Talked about designing Un’Goro Legendaries.  For example, one version of Elise the Trailblazer, was “Discover a Quest”.  Once the Quest was discovered, you would get a package of helper cards in your deck to help complete it. However this made the Quests overall feel “less cool.”  The Un’Goro Pack she ended up with, was originally going to be the Priest Quest Reward but it didn’t feel good enough for that.  Check out the interview here:  IGN

Blizzard announces New Features Coming Soontm

Friends Forever

When the new update arrives, you will be able to complete quests in Friendly Challenges! Challenge a friend, and you get credit towards most of your quests.  Quests that require you to play vs the Innkeeper or watch a match, won’t work.  The last line is funny, “so now you’ll have a reason to make friends with a recent opponent that isn’t just to send them a compliment.”

Golden and non-Golden cards will now stack in decklists

Sharing is Caring – Deck List Importing!  (Blizzard)

You will soon be able to easily copy and share decklists with Deck importing.  Click on a full deck and when you click on the Hero portrait, you’ll see a Copy button.  Press the button and the decklist will be copied to your clipboard. The decklist will look like this: There is a code at the bottom of that text that you can use to share the deck with friends over social media or other places.

When you want to import the deck, copy the code into your clipboard and Hearthstone will “know” you have a valid code in your clipboard and will ask if you want to create a new deck with the one you have copied.  

You will also be able to import decklists to Tavern Brawls.

If you don’t have all the cards, it will be faded like it does with the current Blizzard recipes and when you click on that card, it will suggest replacements.

Espo Mode

100th Tavern Brawl

To celebrate 100 weeks of Brawls, there is a special brawl this past week. How it works is you pick your class and based on the class you choose, you get a different brawl.  So there are 9 different brawls that you will encounter.  It’s fixed based on the class you choose.  When you start the game, little pop up info boxes tell you a few details on what brawl you have and what your opponent has.  It also tells you about when it originally was seen.

Druid – Idols of Azeroth

Your entire deck is filled with Raven Idols (1 mana, Choose One – Discover a minion; or Discover a spell.)

Hunter – Randomonium

The entire deck’s contents are randomized and so are the costs.  Keeping high cost minions was viable because the costs were randomized each turn.

Warrior – Banana Brawl

Deck is randomized.  When one of your minions dies, you get a banana to celebrate.  

Bananas – Give a minion +1/+1

Big Banana – Give a minion +2/+2

Deviate Banana – Swap a minion’s Attack and Health