Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #15 (Mar 17 – Mar 23)

Last month in review:

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

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 Design Position open on the new missions team! – Ben Brode advertised the new position opening in Hearthstone Team on reddit. If you have some past experience with game design and you want to join Blizzard, it might be your chance.
• Journey to Un’Goro Reveal Season Has Started – Every day more cards from the upcoming expansion are revealed. We’re going to see even more reveals on the official stream from HCT Bahamas today. I will try to cover all the new cards that are shown up as quickly as I can if you want to read some reviews!
• Hearthside Chat: Elementals of Un’Goro with Mike Donais – Principle Game designer Mike Donais talks about designing the Elemental tribe from the Journey to Un’Goro, while revealing some cards.
• Hearthside Chat: Un’Goro Quests with Peter Whalen – Another “design” post, this time about another new mechanic – Quests. Senior Game Designer Peter Whalen talks about the development of Quests, how they initially look and what they like about them.
• E. Malone’s Journal – Week Three – Another piece of “lore” or “flavor”, however you call it. We get another page of journal + 2nd video. It seems that at the end of each of those videos, a part of the new card is revealed – however, the card has fully leaked on Japanese site and we most likely know the effect already. While we don’t know what is the Quest that gives you the card, the card itself is a 5 mana 5/5 that Adapts 5 times (so you can pick e.g. Divine Shield, +3 Attack, Stealth, Windfury and Deathrattle).
• HearthPwn: This Week’s Tavern Brawl Is: Decorating Stormwind – It’s technically a new Brawl, although it’s very similar to the Storming Stormwind one we had in the past. This is a PvE Brawl, so you will play against AI instead of other players. You create your own deck (Wild) and you try to get City up to 30 health (it starts at 1 and it gains +1 for every point of damage you deal to it, which means that you have to deal 29 damage), while it grows stronger and stronger, trying to kill you. You win the Brawl once you get Stormwind to 30 health, but the game can go on until you get it to 100 health. I’ve got it to 100 with a classic Zoo with a few additions (every weapon destruction card).
• Goodbye Battle.net client, welcome “Blizzard” – Once your Battle.net client updates, it’s no longer Battle.net. They’ve redesigned their client and made it a simple “Blizzard”. I, for one, am pretty sad, because I’ve been using Battle.net client pretty much since it was released. But nothing seems to have changed besides the name so far.

Ladder/Arena/Competitive

• ViciousSyndicate: vS Data Reaper Report #42 was released – No big swings in deck’s popularity on the overall ladder, but we’ve seen a big shake-up in the Legend meta. It seems that Aggro Shaman is back and it’s strong. Top 8 decks on the overall ladder, according to vS, are: Pirate Warrior, Dragon Priest, Midrange Jade Shaman, Water Rogue, Water Warrior, Aggro Shaman, Dragon Warrior and Zoo Warlock. Top 8 decks in Legend are: Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Midrange Jade Shaman, Dragon Warrior, Dragon Priest, Water Warrior, RenoLock and Water Rogue. So basically, the meta is heavily Aggro/Tempo oriented – 7 out of 8 top decks are Aggro or Midrange.
• TempoStorm: Meta Snapshot #26 (March 19) was released – You can watch the Breakdown video here – Here are the strongest ladder decks this week, according to Tempo Storm. Tier 1: Pirate Warrior, RenoLock, Midrange Jade Shaman Tier 2: Dragon Priest, Aggro Rogue, Jade Druid, Aggro Shaman, Tempo Mage, Dragon Warrior, Reno Mage, Zoo Warlock and Miracle Rogue.
• MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 11 (Mar 13 – Mar 19) was released – The 8 most successful decks last week, according to MetaStats, were: Midrange Shaman, Reno Warlock, Aggro Shaman, Dragon Priest, Pirate Warrior, Aggro Rogue, Miracle Rogue and Anyfin Paladin.
• Patch 7.1 Hearthstone Arena Class Tierlist (driven by HA Class statistics) – HearthArena updates the Tier list with the new, post-patch data. It seems that Rogue is by far the most powerful class after the rotations, which is probably because of the lower offering rates on the small drops (whereas Rogue’s Hero Power is a good turn 2 play nearly every time).

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

• HearthPwn: Trinity Series Winner, Stats – Trinity Series Play-offs have happened during the last weekend. 4 highest scoring teams from Trinity Series – Luminosity, Virtus Pro, Complexity and Team Liquid – have clashed and now we have a winner. In this article you’ll find all the results and the stats. If you want to watch the games yourself, without spoilers, head to the ESL_Hearthstone Twitch channel and see the VoDs there. I really recommend it, as it’s one of the best tournaments I’ve ever watched (whole series, not only the Finals).
• 2017 HCT Winter Championship is taking place between March 23 and March 26 – 16 best players from around the world battle for their share of $250,000 prize pool and a lot of HCT points. Games can be watched live on the PlayHearthstone Twitch channel. I was supposed to be there live, but due to some problems I have to watch it from home 🙁
• Tempo Storm Parts From G2A. Trump Maintains G2A Under Personal Agreement
• Introducing the Tempo Storm Gladiator Cup! A weekly event with HCT points for the qualifiers and crowd funded prizing!
• GosuGamers: Two of China’s HCT finalists have just joined a new super team – After Chinese Hearthstone teams disbanding one after another, it’s a pleasant news to see a new one being created. Team One More (OM) has picked multiple of the best Chinese “free agents” that were left teamless after the recent changes. This time the team has picked JasonZhou and XHope, two very well known and strong players.
• GosuGamers: There will be no Blizzard games at WCA 2017

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #202, Golden Wisp #118, Value Town #114, Lightforge #85, The Innervated #76
• Interview: Lifecoach on quitting Hearthstone: ‘You don’t get rewarded, you get punched in the face’
• Twitter: TJ joins Blizzard. Won’t cast ESL anymore.
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/Customhearthstone (03/18/2017)
• Video: Funny And Lucky Moments – Hearthstone – Ep. 229, 230, 231, 232 and Year of the Kraken edition
• Video: I guess that’s what I get for playing a meme deck

• Video: Hero Power only Tavern Brawl Win
• Video: Toast trolling Firebat’s HS account, replacing key cards with Angry Chicken
• Video: Hearthstone Characters sing Pokemon Theme
• Video: Reynad, why don’t you play Holy Nova and Book Wyrm?
• Video: Thijs’ opponent learns how Demonwrath works
• Video: Kripp with the ultimate Shadow Madness value
• Video: Bored of Hearthstone? Try Cursed Blade.
• Video: To Ungoro
• Video: WoW’s recent Un’Goro Madness event featured 10 bosses, 3 of which have since become legendaries. Here’s a video looking at the rest.
• Video: The Most Unfair Arena Game Ever

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!