Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #14 (Mar 10 – Mar 16)

Last month in review:

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

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

• Journey to Un’Goro – Card Reveal Kick-off Livestream – Card Reveals season will be officially opened very soon. Join the Senior Designer Peter Whalen and Sean “Day9” Plott on March 17 at 11 AM PDT (7 PM CET) for the kick-off livestream with new card reveals. How many? We don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that they will show us at least 10 or 15 new cards. After that, you should expect to see more than one card every day, as the expansion should be released somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks from now. I will share my first thoughts about the new cards as soon as I can!
• Un’goro packs are currently set to be openable April 6th at 10 AM Pacific – Considering that Ben Brode has confirmed the “Early April” release date, it’s more than likely that 6th of April is a target release date for Un’Goro.
• Blizzcon 2017 was announced – It will take place on November 3-4 at Anaheim Convention Center – a location Blizzard fans already know really well. Tickets will go on sale in two batches – first on the April 5th and second on the April 8th. This year’s tickets are priced at $199. Info about Virtual Tickets (mostly for people who want all the in-game goodies, but can’t be there or can’t afford the real ticket) should come out soon.
• E. Malone’s Expedition Journal – Week Two – Another Un’Goro teaser, this time around it comes with a video, starring one and only Danny Pudi (best known as Abed from Community).
• Top 100 Arena Players in February 2017 were announced: Americas, Asia, Europe – What’s worth noting is that Chakki, who is a well-known constructed player, took first place on Americas with an insane 8.933 average wins over 30 runs.
• HearthPwn: Earn Up to 4 Free Card Packs by Voting for the HCT Winter Championship Champion – Just like at the last Blizzcon Championship, you can vote for your Champion and earn card packs as he wins. You get one free pack just by choosing a champion (so it’s worth to do regardless!) and each time the player you chose advances in the bracket, you gain one extra pack. I voted for Pavel, how about you?
• This Week’s Tavern Brawl is: Encounter at the Crossroads! – A Brawl we’ve seen a few times already, this time with a small twist. After a couple of turns, Party Crasher is summoned. We used to get one more every turn, but now we only see one and a new one spawns once the first one is destroyed. Party Crasher is a 3/5 minion with Taunt that attacks face every turn, passing through everything (passes through Taunts, attacks when he’s frozen etc.).

Ladder/Decks/Competitive

• ViciousSyndicate: vS Data Reaper Report #41 was released – Current meta revolves around 2 decks – Pirate Warrior and Jade Druid. Those two make up for a 30% of the meta on the overall ladder and up to 40% close to Legend. Pirate Warrior took the place of Aggro Shaman as the #1 Aggro Deck and the popularity of Jade Druid only increases the deck’s power. The main problem of the current meta is that the decks that counter Pirate Warrior are destroyed by Jade Druid, which is probably the best imaginable meta for the Aggro decks. Soon, Pirate Warrior might be even more dominating than Shaman was pre-patch. When it comes to power level, current meta is dominated by high tempo decks – there is not a single Control decks in the top 8 and RenoLock is the closest we have to a viable Control deck, but it’s still at sub-50% win rate. 8 strongest decks on the ladder right now are: Pirate Warrior, Dragon Priest, Water Warrior, Midrange Jade Shaman, Water Rogue, Aggro Shaman, Zoo Warlock and Dragon Warrior.
• TempoStorm: Meta Snapshot #25 was released – T/S needed an extra week to update the snapshot to fit the post-patch meta. Here are the current Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks according to T/S. Tier 1: Pirate Warrior, Aggro Rogue and Midrange Jade Shaman. Tier 2: Jade Druid, RenoLock, Dragon Priest, Aggro Shaman, Dragon Warrior, Tempo Mage, Miracle Rogue and Reno Mage.
• MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 10 (Mar 6 – Mar 12) was released – The 8 most successful decks last week, according to MetaStats, were: Dragon Warrior, Jade Druid, RenoLock, Anyfin Paladin, Pirate Warrior, Aggro Rogue, Dragon Priest and Midrange Shaman.
• Justsaiyan did 3 consecutive 12 win runs in the Heroic Tavern Brawl with 3 different decks – That’s a really great feat considering how hard it is to even get to 12 wins once (multiple pros have tried and failed). Justsaiyan hit 12 with Jade Druid, Dragon Priest and RenoLock, 3 completely different decks.
• Monte-Carlo Simulating The Hearthstone Ladder – A very interesting article about the relation between your deck’s win rate, how fast you finish each game and how fast you climb the ladder. It just proves what I’ve been already saying multiple times – you can have a lower win rate with a fast deck and still climb faster than someone playing a slow deck.

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

• HCT Winter Championship takes place between March 23 and 26 – 16 best players from around the world will fight for their share of $250.000 and the title of Hearthstone Winter Champion. The event will be casted by 3 awesome duos – Frodan + Kibler, Sottle + Raven and TJ + Admirable. Tune in to all of the action on the official Hearthstone Twitch channel and discuss the tournament using the #HCT hashtag on Twitter and Facebook.
• HearthstoneTopDecks: Hearthstone Winter Championship 2017 Deck Lists – A great, clear compilation of the decklists from the upcoming event, including multiple extra stats like archetype distribution and most popular Legendary.
• HearthPwn: ONOG Hearthstone Major – ONOG Major circuit continues this weekend, March 16 – March 18. Up to 156 players will compete in a double-elimination bracket. While the prize for first place isn’t incredibly high, being only at $4.000, what’s more important is that you also get A LOT of HCT points on top of that (15 for the first place).
• HearthPwn: The Trinity Series – A Hearthstone Team League – Live Finals – Finals of the latest (amazing!) Hearthstone Team League take place between March 16 and 18. You can watch top 4 teams fighting for their share of $150.000 prize pool live on the esl_hearthstone Twitch channel!
• Trump has left TSM and has joined Tempo Storm – Trump is one of the best known Hearthstone players, playing the game since Closed Beta. He doesn’t compete that much these days and mostly streams Hearthstone (sometimes other games too).
• Firebat has left Cloud 9 – We don’t know whether he will look for another team or try to promote his own brand yet. It seems like he wants to focus on event organization and casting instead of playing, though.
• Team Celestial (TiddlerCelestial’s team) has been disbanded – Celestial was one of the biggest Hearthstone teams with a huge roster. It’s another big hit to the competitive HS scene.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #201, Golden Wisp #117, Value Town #113, Lightforge #84
• HearthPwn: Journey to Un’Goro Card Reveal Bingo
• HearthPwn: Warcraft Noob? Learn More About the Story of Un’Goro Crater
• Disguised Toast got disqualified from ONOG for oversleeping. In return, Blizzard has gifted him an alarm clock.
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/Customhearthstone (03/11/2017)
• Art: Wailing of the Old Gods
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 225, 226, 227 and 228
• Video: Toast shows how to Hearthstone
• Video: Fat Blubber Baron
• Video: Thijs – Shooting Stars
• Video: Blizzard Headquarters after the price of Hearthstone Packs Increase
• Video: Hearthstone Characters sing “All Star” by Smash Mouth
• Video: Hearthstone Characters sing Never Gonna Give You Up
• Video: Ratsmah outvalued
• Video: Trump about rotation changes
• Video: Savjz queues into the same player 9 times in a row
• Video: Every Trinity Series Joke Segment
• Video: Journey to Save Hunter
• Video: How To Make Competitive Hearthstone Great Again [Gaara]

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!