Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #13 (Mar 3 – Mar 9)

Last month in review:

• #9 – Feb 3 – Feb 9, 2017
• #10 – Feb 10 – Feb 16
• #11 – Feb 17 – Feb 23
• #12 – Feb 24 – Mar 2

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

• HearthPwn: Blizzard has announced Card Packs price adjustments across Europe – For example, for a bundle of 40 packs, we’re going to see 11% increase in price of packs in Euro and increase 28% in GBP. That’s A LOT of money and if any of you can, I recommend buying packs with Amazon Coins instead.
• HearthPwn: China didn’t get Heroic Tavern Brawl this week, they’ve got one awarding Un’Goro card pack instead – China is going to get HTB next week, so maybe instead we’ll get this new Brawl with an Un’Goro pack? To be fair, it’s always +1 and it’s generally better than Classic for most of the players who already own a big part of the Classic set.
• This Week’s Tavern Brawl is Heroic Tavern Brawl (Standard) – Build a Constructed deck and compete for your share of a huge prize pool. However, in order to enter, you have to pay a huge fee of 1k Gold (or $9,99). You can find a great roundup of decks scoring 12 wins (highest score) here.
• You can vote on a player who will represent your country in Hearthstone Global Games – Once you log-in into the Battle.net and click Vote, you’ll see a few players from your country. You can vote on the one you’d want to represent it in the upcoming tournament. For your trouble, you’ll get a Whispers of the Old Gods card pack (so it’s probably worth to spend 2 minutes to do that). Packs won’t be rewarded immediately!
• E. Malone’s Expedition Journal – Week One – Blizzard has started revealing Un’Goro lore bits. Last time we had a Gadgetzan Gazette, which was pretty interesting read if you’re interested in the lore. It seems that this time around we’ll be getting an Expedition Journal instead. It might reveal some information about the expansion, but you probably shouldn’t expect any major spoilers.
• February Ranked Play Rankings were released for both Standard and Wild – You can check out top 200 Standard and top 100 Wild players here: Standard EU, Standard NA, Wild EU, Wild NA
• Yong Woo confirms Elise card will be in Un’Goro set – It won’t be a reprint, it will be a new card (like Deathwing and Deathwing, Dragonlord). We won’t see any other Explorers this time around. The card will most likely be pretty crazy.

Ladder/Decks/Competitive

• ViciousSyndicate: vS Data Reaper Report #40 was released – There was no Data Reaper Report last week, as the guys at vS were waiting to gather more data of the new meta (post-nerf) before posting anything. Meta did indeed change, but not as much as some people have anticipated. Surprisingly, Pirate Warrior is now #1 deck in place of Aggro Shaman. Even though the nerf to Small-Time Buccaneer has decreased its early game power, the Aggro Shaman matchups, which was bad for Pirate Warrior, is now pretty much gone. Dragon Priest has seen a huge jump in win rate – from 48.5% to 52.2% at higher ranks (not so much in popularity), but the biggest surprise while not being a surprise at all is Jade Druid. The deck has seen a 100% raise in popularity, while only a very slight raise in performance (at high ranks it’s 48.5% as compared to 48.1% from pre-patch). Top 8 decks on the ladder right now, according to Vicious Syndicate, are: Pirate Warrior, Dragon Priest, Water Warrior, Midrange Jade Shaman, Water Rogue, Aggro Shaman, Zoo Warlock and Dragon Warrior.
• MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 9 (Feb 27 – Mar 5) was released – The 8 most successful decks last week, according to MetaStats, were: Midrange Shaman, Control Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Dragon Priest, Aggro Rogue, Evolve Shaman, Dragon Warrior and Aggro Shaman.

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: CLG Hearthstone disbands after two short months – In January, CLG has picked a ex-Na’Vi roster of Xixo, Hoej and Surrender. Sadly, the team’s run in Hearthstone didn’t last long and it has just disbanded.
• Cydonia joins TSM – Cydonia is the first competitive player in the TSM’s roster. The team already signed 3 players, but they’re all streamers – Massan (who is no longer part of the team), Trump and Kripparrian.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #200, Golden Wisp #116, Value Town #112, Lightforge #83, The Innervated #75
• Kripparrian, Ben Brode and DisguisedToast have battled in the latest edition of Streamer Showdown (casted by Noxious) – Streamers/Pro Players/Hearthstone celebrities compete in a series of game-related games like Cardology, Twitch Chat Says or Artstone. The show is really fun, if you’re interested you can find the VoD here.
• Interview: Peter Whalen, Lead Designer for Journey to Un’Goro & Dr. Tzachi Zach, Data Analyst for Vicious Syndicate
• RollingStone: Why Thousands Watch Octavian ‘Kripparrian’ Morosan Play a Card Game
• Twitter: A pic of Ben Brode from his first year at Blizzard 14 years ago
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/Customhearthstone
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 223
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 224
• Video: Poor Man’s OTK C’thun Druid
• Video: Rich Man’s OTK Combo Druid ft. Douyu Moments #99
• Video: The HGG Rap | J4CKIECHAN
• Video: Savjz’ snipe-proof plays
• Video: Disguised Toast VS Reynad – A Hearthstone Showdown
• Video: The Hearthstone Dream – TicTac
• Video: Top 200 LEGEND with Medivh Warlock (Toast)
• Video: Can YOU spot it? | Hearthstone Lethal Puzzles #2
• Video: REYNAD’S MALFURION SONG!
• Video: Druid of the Saber One Turn Kill – HysteriA
• Video: Bat Wisdom: How to 12 Win Heroic Brawl

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!