Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #18 (Apr 14 – Apr 20)

Last month in review:

• #14 – Mar 10 – Mar 16
• #15 – Mar 17 – Mar 23
• #16 – Mar 24 – Mar 30
• #17 – Apr 7 – Apr 13

Introduction

Weekly Hearthstone Roundup is a series summarizing last week in Hearthstone. By making a compilation of the news regarding game, teams, pro players, ladder, community etc. we try to make catching up easier for those of you who don’t follow the HS news every day.

If you feel that we’ve missed something important or that we didn’t properly cite the source, let us know in the comments and we’ll fix it right away.

General/Game News

• Blizzard has shared some details about the HCT Winter – While more details should come out soon, so far we’ve learned about the format, changes to the Tavern Hero tournaments and dates of the Play-Offs.
• HearthHead: Ben Brode has shared some news in his Tweeter answers – Tracking Class ranked wins past 500 should come out soon – sadly, there probably won’t be any rewards attached to getting more wins. Blizzard is also thinking about adding Wild packs (which would be great for any Wild player), but that’s not confirmed yet.
• ShackNews: Hearthstone Designer Says Rogue Quest Raised Power Concerns – Dean Alaya answers some quick questions. To make the long story short, it seems that they’re fine with the current Quest Rogue power. And the stats back that up – the deck is nowhere near close to the top, if anything it is a little below the average.
• You can pre-purchase an artbook titled “The Art of Hearthstone” on Amazon – The book is 288 pages long and contains Hearthstone concept arts, final card arts and some history behind the game. It can be a great gift for any Hearthstone fan! (I would love to get one)
• Journey to Un’Goro T-Shirt is now available for purchase in the official Blizzard store – If you’re collecting official gear, you can’t miss that one – Un’Goro-themed T-Shirt is now available for $24 in both men and women version.
• HearthPwn: This Week’s Tavern Brawl is: An Ancient Recipe – It’s a new Brawl with 9 premade decks. You pick a class and you get a premade, Un’Goro-focused deck, e.g. a Quest deck for Rogue, Elemental deck for Shaman and Dinomancy deck for Hunter. It’s a great opportunity to test out some of the new cards before deciding whether you want to craft them or not.

Ladder/Arena/Competitive

• Vicious Syndicate: Data Reaper Report #44 is out! – It’s the first Report after the Un’Goro’s release, but the meta is still far from stabilizing. We should still experience a lot of shifts, but we can see a general outline of which decks are strong and which aren’t. Top 8 decks on the ladder overall are: Pirate Warrior, Midrange Paladin, Murloc Paladin, Freeze Mage, Midrange Hunter, Aggro Shaman, Token Druid and Taunt Warrior. Situation in Legend is very similar, so I won’t repeat myself. What might be surprising to some people is that Exodia Mage, or Quest Mage deck with infinite damage combo, is at the bottom of the stake with only 36% average win rate. Besides that, it’s hard to talk about any surprises, as we still don’t know what will happen a week from now!
• You can check out a currently trending deck for each class on the HSReplays.net site! – The site offers a selection of decks that have been rising to popularity in the last 48h. Those might not be the best builds, but they’re the ones you should be seeing on the ladder more and more right now. For a compilation of the decks in general, check out the “Decks” section.
• Hearthstone Crafting Guide For The Journey to Un’Goro Meta – I’ve made a crafting guide for the Un’Goro meta, so if you’re wondering which cards you might want to craft to support the current popular decks, this resource should be helpful.

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

• HearthPwn: Hearthstone Global Games Week 2 – Team from 48 different countries will face each other in the Best of 5 format. Week 2 of Group Stage has taken place between April 18 and 20, but there is still a lot of action to come – group stage will be played for many more weeks. You can watch new matches live every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the official PlayHearthstone channel. If you’ve missed the action, you can also watch the VoDs from every match!
• Red Bull Team Brawl took place on April 15 – 4 teams fought in an unique format – 3v3 Team Sealed. Instead of playing with Constructed decks, they’ve first opened 60 packs from different expansions and had to create 3 decks out of the 300 cards they’ve unpacked. Tournament was casted by the Dan “Frodan” Chou and Nathan “Admirable” Zamora duo. You can watch the whole VoD here. (Personal note: It’s a really fun tournament if you’re bored with the classic Constructed formats, I hope that we’ll get more events like that in the near future)
• GosuGamers: China goes aggro as JasonZhou wins Gold Series Summer title (decklists inside)

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #206, Golden Wisp #122, Value Town #118, Lightforge #89, The Innervated #78
• Streamer Showdown #8 has happened on April 18 – You can watch the VoD on YouTube. In this show, streamers and pro players take part in multiple quizzes about Hearthstone. It tests the knowledge about the game itself, but also about the lore, card voice lines or flavor texts. The show is hosted by Noxious and this time around, the three participants were Firebat, Trump and DisguisedToast.
• GosuGamers: Interview with DrJikininki: “I think NA will potentially be stronger than EU.”
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/Customhearthstone (04/15/2017)
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 240 and 241
• Video: All Journey to Un’goro Legendary Music
• Video: Toast is smart
• Video: Don’t mess with Kripp
• Video: Goodbye Kraken
• Video: Tides with a sick Crab tech
• Video: World Champion (Firebat) plays
• Video: ThijsNL – Makes the Hard Call to Give up his Board
• Video: Savjz uses Mirage Caller on his Tirion
• Video: Savjz and his APM
• Video: Senfglas gets memed
• Video: Amaz is too slow
• Video: Savjz Punishes Ice Block
• Video: Dog playing his outs
• Video: Player comes back to the game, gets smashed by Holy Wrath – Molten Giant Combo
• Video: Kripparian – I Really Hate Meteor
• Video: Reynad evaluates state of Mage
• Video: Disguised Toast, Trump, and Kibler EXPLORE UN’GORO Together!
• Video: Amaz showing the power of Lyra the Sunshard

Closing

If there are any more news from last week we might have missed, let us know in the comments. And, once again, if you have any suggestions for this series (or for the site in general!) we’d really appreciate if you’d let us know.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!