Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #12 (Feb 24 – Mar 2)

Last month in review:

• #8 – Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2017
• #9 – Feb 3 – Feb 9, 2017
• #10 – Feb 10 – Feb 16
• #11 – Feb 17 – Feb 23

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

• New Hearthstone Expansion is Journey to Un’Goro – It’s now officially confirmed, new Hearthstone expansion will be called Journey to Un’Goro. It will feature the rich fauna and flora of the Un’Goro crater, one of the most flavorful World of Warcraft zones. The set will contain 135 cards and should come out early in April. My post will be constantly updated with the new information about the expansion.
• Balance Patch & Changes to Arena went live – Small-Time Buccaneer and Spirit Claws got nerfed and Arena is now Standard, among some other changes to offering rates of different cards. On top of that, we get to experience the first season with “Ranked floors” (now at ranks 20, 15, 10 and 5) + we’ve got a new keyword – Poisonous – which describes the effect of cards like Emperor Cobra or Pit Snake (for those of you who don’t know – if they damage a minion, they kill it no matter how much health it has). There are also various bug fixes and small changes, so if you’re interested, check out the patch notes.
• Hearthstone March 2017 Ranked Play Season has started – This is the first season that features ranked floors and at the same time it’s the last full season of the Year of the Kraken. And so, the card back we’re getting this time around is Year of the Kraken.
• Reddit: The login rewards have been revealed by datamining – Blizzard has announced adding extra rewards in the weeks up to the expansion’s release and daily log-in rewards are one of them. Let’s hope that not only. And to be fair, Hearthstone would use such daily log-in rewards resetting weekly. Getting 50 extra Gold or a pack every few days for being a loyal customer and logging every day would only help.
• HearthPwn: This Week’s Tavern Brawl is: Gadgetzan Throw-Down! – A new Brawl featuring leaders of the 3 Gadgetzan gangs. You play as Aya Blackpaw, Don Han’Cho or Kazakus (chosen randomly) with cards from the 3 classes that belong to the gang + synergistic Hero Power. It’s pretty sad that we didn’t get to see this Brawl right before the Gadgetzan’s release (or as the first Brawl of Gadgetzan), because it would be much more fun.
• Next Week’s Tavern Brawl will be Heroic Tavern Brawl – Heroic Tavern Brawl returns, once again just before the new expansion. The entry fee is huge ($9,99 or 1.000 gold), but the potential rewards are even better. However, if you’re a casual player, I would recommend tuning to your favorite streamer instead of playing it yourself. The chances that you will get your gold back are slim, winning something is even harder, not to mention that you’re winning Gadgetzan packs, which are much more valuable right now than the packs from upcoming expansion. If you want to read the full math on whether it’s worth to play HTB or not, I recommend you my article from the last Brawl.
• Reddit: Players will be able to disable Golden cards in Arena in the future – Golden cards came to the Arena with the last update and while most of the players enjoy them, some don’t really like to play them. While it’s easy in Constructed, because you can choose to not put them into your deck, they’re auto-included into Arena decks. And some of them aren’t even disenchantable (Basic Golden cards). The option to disable them altogether post-draft should come in the future.

Ladder/Decks/Competitive

• ViciousSyndicate and TempoStorm didn’t release any Snapshots this week – It’s probably because they want to wait a bit until the meta stabilizes after the balance patfch
• MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 8 (Feb 20 – Feb 26) was released – The 8 most successful decks last week, according to MetaStats, were: Midrange Shaman, Reno Mage, Evolve Shaman, Malygos Rogue, Aggro Rogue, Aggro Shaman, Reno Priest and Pirate Warrior.

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

• HearthPwn: The Trinity Series – A Hearthstone Team League Week 7 – 8 teams will compete for their share of $130,000 prize pool. This week’s matches were: Virtus.Pro vs Complexity, Alliance vs Team Liquid (March 1) and Tempo Storm vs G2, Luminosity Gaming vs Cloud 9 (March 2). Games can be watched live on the esl_hearthstone Twitch channel every Wednesday and Thursday at 10AM PST (7PM CET). VoDs are available on the same Twitch channel.
• GosuGamers: APAC crowns its Winter Champion, all HCT Winter players now known – We know the full 16 players roster that will compete for the Hearthstone Winter Champion title in the Bahamas between March 23-26.
• GosuGamers: The most successful Hearthstone team in China is disbanding – The team first founded under different name (Yolo Miracle) very early in the competitive history of Hearthstone, later rebranded to eStar, has won the Chinese team league 3 times, making it the most successful Chinese team so far. Chinese team being disbanded shouldn’t be a huge surprise, though, because other Chinese giants like World Elite or OMG have already closed their Hearthstone divisions.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• Ben Brode spits fire rapping about Journey to Un’Goro – Community has complained that, unlike other expansion trailers, the new one doesn’t feature a catchy tune. They’ve asked Ben Brode to sing one instead and… he delivered. Best when watched at 1.5x speed. We’ve already seen multiple remixes of the song, some of which I will post below.
• LifeCoach quits Hearthstone in favor of Gwent – One of the hottest topics of the last week is LifeCoach’s statement that he leaves Hearthstone and will play Gwent instead. He will still play in the tournaments he likes, because its mostly the ladder play he hates. He offers his thoughts about the current state of the game too. Personally I understand decision and I can recommend Gwent, because the game is really fun, but I wouldn’t go as far as completely quitting Hearthstone.
• GosuGamers: Five questions with Lifecoach: “The direction Hearthstone is headed contradicts what the pros want”
• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #199, Golden Wisp #115, Value Town #111, Lightforge #82, The Innervated #75
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/CustomHearthstone (02/26/2017)
• Reddit: Member of the Swedish Parliament to start streaming Hearthstone
• Reddit: The Hearthstone Reddit Glossary
• Fanart: Worthy Opponent by Will Murai
• Fanart: Kazakus 3D model by Sergey Ponomarenko
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 221
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 222
• Video: Patch 7.1 in a Nutshell
• Video: Ben Brode – Journey To Un’Goro (We Are Number One Remix)
• Video: Ben Brode’s ‘Ungoro – The Journey’ Remixed
• Video: Ben Brode Un’Goro Triphop remix
• Video: Feel Brode Inc
• Video: Journey to Un’Goro Cinematic Trailer With Song
• Video: (Parody) An Abridged Hearthstone Q&A (one of the most funny videos I’ve ever seen, I really recommend it)
• Video: Devolve is too OP
• Video: Hearthstone’s Greatest Player
• Video: The Crusher King
• Video: Twitch Streamers React to Drawing Patches on the Opening Turn

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!