A fortnight of Tavern Brawls

Apologies for the lack of a post last week, a busy week personally combined with a repeatedBrawl meant a week was missed.

So on to the missed brawl, Show down at Blackrock Mountain.

This was actually the first brawl ever.  And features a prebuilt Ragnaros deck vs. prebuilt Nefarian deck.

I have issues with this brawl, and from what I gather I am not the only one.   The brawl seems more favoured towards Nefarian.   His hero power (which is free!) seems more useful, especially as Rags power doesn't get a buff until at least 5 turns in once his weapon is gone.

Factor in Nefarian's minions seem to have better synergy you are getting more for your mana ans speaking of mana even though he has a free hero power Nefarian appears to start with 4 mana.

All in all not a fan of is one, got my pack and wasn't too fussed after that.

Now this weeks brawl is a different kettle of fish!

This one was touted for a few weeks ago but didn't happen and we were given Webspinners again.

This is Catain Blackhearts Treasure

Pick your class.

The decks appear to be made entirely of 2/3 2 mana pirates.

Each turn instead if drawing a card you are given the option of three random cards, a bit like an arena draft but with out the rarity limitations.

My suggestions for this brawl would be a) pick a class you are familiar with b) pick your cards with an eye on curve, situation and power.   If you get a powerful legendary early one then grab it, a turn 1 or 2 Dr Boom, Alexstraza, Antonidas, Rhonin etc is worth it later, you can form game plan around it.

 There is not a great lot more than can be said, ride the random and have fun!

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Unite Against Mechazod

Love it!!

Sorry had to jump straight in with that!

This week, especially with last weeks problems, Blizzard have out done themselves!

A Team Tavern Brawl!

Yes you and another player go up against the might of Mechazod!

 

The run down is this.

You and a player are assigned either a pre-built Priest or Paladin deck to face off against the boss.

The set up for this is quite nice as you each take a side as per a normal game and the boss is a floating entity between you both and he flits from one side to the other depending on whose turn it is.   He also has taunt so you cannot accidentally hurt your team mate.   His stats are 2/95.

 

 His attacks are random and he makes one at the end of each player turn.

They include: 

Assassinate -  same as the rogue card, destroys a minion, it has always been the highest attack minion in my games and it goes through divine shield.

Overclock - grants him +2 attack, this stacks, I have seen him up to 12 or 14 attack

His other abilities allow him to do his attack damage to either each hero or to 3 random enemies, heroes and minions alike can be hit with this.

There also seems to be some very specific attacks, there is one at least that will take out Lorewalker Cho specifically.

That is basically it, the idea is to work in tandem with your opponent and take him out, if either of you dies he wins.

There are some nice little combos in the decks including Lorewalker Cho so you can get extra spells between you both, the healing from the priest and the buffing/shielding from the Paladin are very powerful.   Play this with Millhouse Manastorm from the Priest deck and you are aces up!

The really fun part of this Brawl though is playing it with a friend, you can queue solo and get your pack, win or lose, but teaming up with a buddy and planning your moves is a lot of fun.

So I shall leave it here and just say: Well done Blizzard!

Hearthsone Tavern Brawl: Spider, spiders, everywhere

Unfortunately this post is going out a little bit later than usual and will be quite brief.

There were many issues with the tavern brawl released on Wednesday to the point that Blizzard pulled it.   this was a shame as it looked like a fun one, I shall save my thoughts on it until it sees full release.
With having the World Championship/Road to Blizzcon stuff going on as well as the freshly released Overwatch beta I guess rather than try and grind out a fix they switched to one of their old fall backs.

Spiders, Spiders everywhere.

See my previous thoughts on the event here:
http://25hrhobby.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/hearthstone-tavern-brawl-16-september.html

So pick a class and get a random deck with a few spells and no minions barring Webspinners, a 1/1 for 1 mana minion that adds a random beast to your hand as a deathrattle.

It is an ok Brawl but can be very RNG reliant.   I lost a few games as I got low cost, not very good minions and the opponent was getting strong late game minions but that's the way it rolls!

An extra little thought I had for this is using health boosting spells to increase the health of your opponents Webspinners therefore restricting their access to better beasts as they cannot pop their own spinners as efficiently.

Going to leave it here for now.

Looking forward to next week

Hearthstone tavern brawl: Whose the Boss now?

This weeks tavern brawl is an interesting twist on the usual weekly dose of RNG

As it says you are given a random hero power from one of the games bosses and each time you use it you get a new one.

Now one interesting tactical point here is when you get a new power it counts afresh so if you have the mana you can use multiple hero powers a turn which makes inspire minions very powerful, especially those that buff or spawn minions.

The hero powers each cost 2 mana like a regular hero power even though the bosses can use them at different costs

I have played 5 games with 3 wins, I lost the first two (with Druid and rogue) then clicked on the above point and have won 3 on the bounce, first rogue then two with hunter.

My decks have been fairly aggro based with a smattering of removal and topped up with inspire minions such as kvaldir raider, muklas champion and kodo riders as my biggies with the bonus that they synergies quite well together and can add a lot of pressure for the opponent.

Rather than discuss the hero powers you can get, here are some screen shots of some of the ones I got.  You can get the same one multiple times in a row.   (Sorry for the formatting, I cannot arrange them very well on my iPad.  I shall try and tidy it up if I get to my pc!)

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Randominium

Welcome back, unfortunately various issues out of my hands meant I could not do a second part to last weeks post.

I did start, a warrior deck was created with few low cost andbuilding up from there to take advantage of the draw on curve mechanic last week leaving essential cards the only one in their slot.
I was getting there with tweaking the deck, I ended up adding a bit more early game removal which helped but no further info was gained.

so onto this week, RANDOMINIUM

It appears the RNG is cranked up to 11 this week, choose a class and get a random deck in which the card cost changes each time!

Ok, I would like to say first up, I like RNG in my games, adds a bit of spice to them at times but having played 3 games of this tavern brawl I would  say it has been a wee bit over-baked.

First up Warrior vs Warlock.   The shifting costs gave me a very very good start.  

A Sea Reaver and a Sparing Partner for 1 mana each was nuts,

add a turn 3 1 mana rampage and my opponent was done and they conceded.   Too be fair I cannot blame them, it was horrifically one sided.   RNG was on my side in buckets!

Game 2 I switched it up to Rogue, a class I not majorly familiar with but have played around with a bit recently, vs Priest.   As you can see by turn 3 I had major board control

I did not have it all my own way this time as he cast a spell to heal 4 when a minion attacked onto one of my minions!   That held me up a turn or two as I just went for taking on his minions, once the board was clear it was not long before he quit as well :(


Game 3, final run Hunter vs Shaman, I hate playing shaman so this was going to be interesting.

Kept the starting hand as a low cost King Krush was tempting!

Krush did not get as much use or value as I had hoped, I brought him out a few turns in as he was 4 mana to start before dropping to 2 or 3 to be played, but he kept the board clear to start.
The pair of us kept adding minions, taking out others and had a really good tussle for board control going, Kodorider was very useful.   Things swung a bit more in my favour when I managed a Chillmaw and Animal Companion (Misha) for a mana each to add some serious taunt to my board that he did not have, he got quickly reduced to just 1 last health point, I thought I had him but forgot Annoy-o-tron could not attack that turn!   My opponent tried valiantly over the last to break through my Dragon-Bear-Mech wall to the soft hunter center but he could not and conceded.

The final game was the most balanced by far, the RNG played well for both sides from what I saw, the first 2 games were curb-stomps in my favour which did not feel so great.

From what I can tell there is not really any tactics to this brawl really, just play to the board state, if you have a biggy going cheap that you do not want to risk getting costly again put them down but it really is all about reacting to what is in front of you as anything can happen!!

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl - Clockwork Card Dealer

Welcome to the next Brawl post!

This week is clockwork card dealer.

This week the new rule is each turn you will draw a card on curve, guaranteed.

You get to pick you class and build your deck, I picked Mage for the first run through, I tried to spread my curve out so not too heavy in any slot thus making sure what ever is drawn each turn has value.

It looked a little like this:

The early turns were closely balanced vs my rogue opponent, I was hit pretty hard mid game but healbot steadied the ship and a force tank max which was effigied when hit with assassinate followed by nefarian gave me the win.

There are a few other thoughts on deck construction I would like to try out, playing a single card in the deck for 1-5 mana and loading my bases for a big finale.   I shall try that next and post it up.

Until next time!

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Annoy-O-Tron vs Boom Bot (updated)

Iiiiin the blue corner... He's cheap, he taunts, he has divine shield iiiiits annoy-o-tron!

Iiiiin the red corner... He's the doom from Doctor Boom iiiiiits Boom Bot

This week the Tavern Brawl returns to remade character decks.

Both of these decks as you can imagine have a mech heavy theme with a mix of spells from other classes and a few weapons thrown in too (at least for AoTron, I did not see any with BBot)

I have only played as BBot so far so I shall update the post once I have played AoTron as well.

We have new hero powers to any with this week.

BBot comes with Boom Bot jr.

I found this a very useful little power, it helped me maintain board control early on as well as chipping away at face.

Combining this with the fairly cheap minions allowed me a steady victory.  As long as things were not too critical I would either soften the opponent with BBJ then finish off any minions with mine and face with anything else.  Or clear the minions in my way then BBJ to face.   It has the added advantage of possibly countering AoTrons ability, which it should do reliably if you are winning the board control scrap.

AoTrons power is a bit more utility based.

As long as you are putting minions down this can be a hassle for the opponent giving them minions they have to go through first with a touch of added durability.   If BBot is struggling to keep minions on the board then you can keep topping up minions with divine shield.

From what I have seen this dos not play as much of a role as BBJ but as stated before I have not played it yet.   I shall update once I have had a go with AoTron

That is all for now, just keep on top of the board control side of things and the game should be yours.

Ok got a game with AoTron.

With careful planning the hero power can be very effective, there are cheap minions to put it on early and cards to buff with, having several divine shield taunts that you may be able to re-shield is very good.

The planning is around getting a low attack minion out and boosting it, use the spells in the deck to buff its attack so it is above the attack of any other minions on the table then boost that and repeat as required.

In my game I regularly had two DS/T minions at most times.

All in all a fun brawl but now I have played both sides I cannot see me diving in too quickly again this week.

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Underdog rules

Welcome to this weeks look at TavernBrawl for Hearthstone.

This week it is titled Underdog rules, the rules this week being if you are losing by 3 or more health a random minion comes to help you!

A few thoughts on this, is it better to start slow and hope to gain this magical advantage and go for a big turn late on or is it a burst the opponent down so quick they cannot gain too much of an advantage from the rules?   How will board control fit into this if there will be free minions bouncing around?

I figured I shall go for a bit of Warlockery fisrt up, the tapping for cards would work well to see how this new ruleset would benefit the underdog.

So I threw together a handlock-ish style deck and dived in...

So that was a lot of fun!   Getting the balance right between keeping the enemies health low enough that they could not gain too much advantage vs keeping mine low enough to gain the advantage but not be killed off was very good.   Using  flame imps early I got the board advantage (battle cry deals 3 damage to me) and jsut kept hitting them enough that I could keep good board comtrol with spells and token minion, defend with the likes of sludge belcher but still build enough of a threat to win.

I will admit to a bit of luck, it was my 6 health vs their 7 and one of the random minions I got had spell damage +1, they had played Loetheb the previous turn but I had enough mana to play a 6 mana drain life for 3 damage and go face with sludge belcher and a random 3/2 I had for the win.

I think tweaking away from the likes of the giants I had in and maybe look for a bit more board control, I did find the minions a little bit delicate and I could have been in trouble if my opponent got a big card.

All in all the RNG felt pretty good on this play through, both sides seemed to get ok minions, usually along the lines of 2/2, 2/3, 3/2, 3/3 minons which felt good for free and not give either player a massive advantage.

Unfortunately my free pack all went to dust!

Fingers crossed my next post will be something of an arena experiment!

Hearthstone: Tavern Brawl 16 September 2015

New edit added to the bottom...

So this will be the first in hopefully a regular blog post about the weekly tavern brawl event in the Blizzard card game, Hearthstone.

These events run Wednesday to Sunday and have unique rules to them and successfully winning a game rewards a Standard card pack, but only one.

So on to this week, it is a repeat of a previous event, or is it?

It is advertised as the unstable portals event but in my two games it was the webspinner event so this is what I shall write about.  

You pick your class and get a pre-constructed deck which is packed full of webspinner cards.  These are 1/1 beasts for 1 mana with a deathrattle of add a random beast to the controlling players hand.  

So you slap down these cheap beasties and hopefully get them killed off to fill your hand with new and improved beasts.

I started with a warlock deck, expecting the portals event, and the deck outside of the spinners had a lot of demon synergy cards but I never saw a demon, not a great start.

The beasts are random so you could end up with Captains Parrot or Ghaz'rilla or anything between.

This event relies a lot on good RNG to be competitive in a lot of cases.   In my 2 games so far first run was a bit poor, no powerful beasts came out so I struggled for board control and eventually lost it in the late game.

The second went a lot better, the RNG gave me King Krush early on so it was a case of holding out for late game, 2 Savage combatants among others helped keep things a bit in my favour until I could get my big dino onto the table to win it.

All in all quite a fun event, may play a few more times for a bit of a laugh but not one of my favourites but should not take long to get the pack.

If it changes back to portals I shall write that up too.

Ok it appears that they have shifted to the portals now.

Still a case of pick a class and get a pre-built deck but instead of lots of spiders it has lots of unstable portals.   This is a 2-mana card that adds a random minion to your hand, the kicker is they cost 3 less (minimum 0).  So you can build yourself quite the stable of cheap high powered minions for some big turns but again watch the board control and hope the RNG favours you!

Enjoy, until next time!

Ready for Vappafaux?

Unfortunately things have been very bust my end so the plan for regular crew updates went out of the window.

But this is how things worked out:

~ 15/16Jan the gamin, golem and wendigo were completed

You can provably just make out the snow falling in the glass! Appropriate eh!

Then ~ 23Jan the acolytes and some bases were finished.

And lastly Rasputina herself and the last bases were completed on 30Jan

This is everything complete, painted and varnished

The bases were a mix of ones done myself and the wyrd inserts, they all utilised crackle medium paint for ice and/or snow effects, the wyrd bases used were the western ones, town and sewer bases with the ice and snow tying them together, the idea being that it showed no matter where you were Rasputine could brig the powerif December against you!

I shall go a bit more in to the painting and bases in a later post, the next one will likely be a Vappafaux wrap up and crew impressions as I am going into the event with 0 games under my belt!

Arcanist update

So a week on from the last post, how has progress been?

Unfortunately fairly slowly, on the plus side my 3 gamin are done and the wendigo is not far behind.

The golem needs a bit more layering before I can finish it too.

That will just leave Rasputina and the three amigos, I mean acolytes!

The acolytes will need a bit of exit work as their poses are asking for some more elaborate style bases, that's all I need now, a modelling project as well.

Any way once the last few bits on the first set of models are done there will be pictures.

Fail to plan...

Well all the crew has been built and ready for undercoating, yay!

Forgot to check if I had enough undercoat, d'oh!

Oh well can pick up some tomorrow so it will not hold me up too far.

In the mean time I shall start to have a proper look into the abilities of the crew and what it means on the table.

Malifaux challenge update

Brief update:

Rasputina, ice golem, wendigo and 2 ice gamin have been built.

The wendigo is in 3 sections to aid painting.

The December acolytes have also arrived so full steam ahead tomorrow, hopefully get everything built and undercoated if at all possible.

Currently feeling positive.   Cannot forget though I need to get some 40k painting in this month as well.

New Year Challenge

About this time last year I was getting ready for the Vappafaux event, part of Vappnartak, a hobby convention in York.   Vappafaux is a 40 soul stone 3 round Malifaux event.   Vappa14 was my first event in several years, my crew (outcasts) had been fairly ignored for a long while.   I managed to get some practise games in and paint up some of my crew.   The event came and went and was a great deal of fun, I did not place too highly after a close game, a bloody draw and a final game I struggled to compete in.

The months came and went, my daughter came into the world and hobby stalled, not to a halt but to a major slow down.

Then the announcement if Vappa15 came out, I put my name down in a flash and paid my fee, I figured I had months to get really ready so no pressure.   Work, family, time away, other hobbies getting new stuff (WoW, SW:TOR, Tyranids, Blood Angels, End Times) and moving out of my house for major refurb followed by Christmas and New Year has left me in my current predicament, I am barely any further on from last year.

So I currently have 28 days to knuckle down and get my crew sorted.   Normally should be fairly easy you may say, especially as some of it has been started.

In 2013 I signed up for the Through the Breach Malifaux kick starter, when it came through, much later than originally planned the lovely people at Wyrd also gave the backers a free, random starter box.   Mine was The Children of December Rasputina crew.   Not a crew I had considered in the past but hey, free is free!

I have decided in my great wisdom and habit of "oh look! Shiny!" I am planning to try to get my Rasputina crew built and painted for Vappafaux.

I have my initial starter box and some December Acolytes on the way so I shall hopefully updating my blog regularly with updates

The ice gamin and ice golem will get the standard ice paint scheme I think.   I may try to give the wendigo a Wampa look if possible, Rasputina will be the trickier one, whether to go full ice look with blue coat etc or something a bit more utilitarian.

The acolytes may get some sort of snow camo thing.

Fingers crossed :)