Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #22 (May 12 – May 18)

Last month in review:

• #18 – Apr 14 – Apr 20
• #19 – Apr 21 – Apr 27
• #20 – Apr 28 – May 4
• #21 – May 5 – May 11

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 Features Coming to Hearthstone! – In the next week’s update, two new features will be available for the players. First one is “Friendly Feuds” now being a thing all the time. You will be able to complete your daily Quests against Friends whenever you want! Second one is deck exporting/importing. You will be able to export and import decks from and into Hearthstone much more easily, without using any third party tools. Copying a deck will give you a code that others can paste into their games to get the same deck. If you’re missing a few cards, it will work like deck recipes and the game will offer you some replacements (but be careful, the replacement system in the game is pretty poor, so it might be better to ask the deck creator instead). As a final note, deck lists will now stack the non-golden and golden cards together, making the lists much easier to look at when they contain a mix of gold and non-gold cards.
• Get a Free Card For Logging In On May 20th! – Yes, that’s right. Every player who logs in on May 20th will get a free copy of Fight Promoter. Even if you don’t plan to play this card in any deck, it’s still 100 Dust for free, so there’s no reason to miss it! My guess is that if it makes enough people interested in logging in (e.g. the login numbers will be significantly higher than normally), they might give out more cards in the future to increase their playerbase’s interest in the game (because when you log in, you’re more likely to also play some games, do daily quests etc. and maybe get hooked again).
• Hearthstone April Final Rankings have been released! – You can now check which players had highest ranks in Standard, Wild and Arena. Here are the links: NA Standard, NA Wild, NA Arena —- EU Standard, EU Wild, EU Arena
• The first episode of a mini-series called “Hearthstone Mulligans” was released – You can watch the first episode, “Error 14”, on YouTube.
• Ben Brode has acknowledged that Blizzard has more events planned – Let’s cross the fingers that we’re going to see some of them soon!
• Max McCall talks about Keywords in Standard – Basically, he tells us that too many keywords at the same time would be overwhelming. It wouldn’t really add more depth to the game, but it would require new players to memorize more and more keywords. They prefer to instead add the depth to the game through card’s text and not the keywords themselves.
• HearthPwn: This Week’s Tavern Brawl is: An Evil Exchange – This is the second time we can play this Brawl, but this time with a slight alteration – Kel’Thuzad’s Hero Power now adds a random Naxx minion to your hand instead of resurrecting a random minion that died this game. You get to play the game as either Archthief Rafaam or Kel’Thuzad and fight against the other, each one starts with a lot of health and has many unique minions and powers.

Ladder/Arena/Competitive

• Vicious Syndicate: Data Reaper Report #48 is out! – The meta seems to stabilize, with no new decks emerging out this week. But at the same time, it’s a pleasure to look at the class/deck representation graphs. It’s still incredibly diverse, even in higher ranks, where the meta tends to be more concentrated around few best decks. Top 8 decks on the ladder last week, according to the vS, were: Murloc Paladin, Secret Mage, Pirate Warrior, Token Druid, Midrange Paladin, Burn Mage, Control Paladin, Dragon Priest and Elemental Shaman. Top 8 decks in Legend were: Secret Mage, Burn Mage, Murloc Paladin, Midrange Paladin, Token Druid, Pirate Warrior, Control Paladin and Dragon Priest.
• SectorOne: Top Legend Decks from Un’Goro Expansion
• 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.

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

• HearthPwn: Hearthstone Global Games Week 6 – Teams from 48 different countries will face each other in the Best of 5 format. Week 5 of Group Stage has taken place between May 16 and 18, but there is still a lot of action to come – group stage will be played for many weeks and then play-offs will happen. 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!
• GosuGamers: China takes another Ferrari in the fourth CN vs. EU – In the end, CN vs EU tournament ended with an all-Chinese final, after last two players from EU (StanCifka and Pavel) eliminated in the semi-finals. It means that once again, the Ferrari worth around $200,000 will be driven (or sold) by the Chinese player.
• GosuGamers: Lifecoach parts with G2 Esports – LifeCoach has decided to end his Hearthstone career and focus on the other card games a while ago. His current point of focus is another card game that’s currently in the closed beta (it’s getting into the open beta next week and I recommend trying it out) – Gwent. Lately he won $60,000 in the first major Gwent tournament and it seems that he will play it full-time now. But G2 Esports aren’t ready to get into this game just yet, so they and LifeCoach had to part their ways.
• GosuGamers: StrifeCro ends three-year stint with Cloud9, joins Phoenix1 – It’s really surprising, as C9 seemed like one of the only HS teams with a steady roster. StrifeCro, one of the most veteran HS players, have decided to join the ranks of a relatively new team – Phoenix1. HS is the third game they’re exploring and they plan to develop the HS team further around StrifeCro.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #210, Golden Wisp #126, Value Town #122, Lightforge #93, The Innervated #79 (no new episode)
• IGN: [Interview] Hearthstone: Designing Un’Goro’s Most Innovtive Legendary Minions
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/CustomHearthstone (05/15/2017)
• Art: Official Elise Starseeker Papercraft
• Video: Rogue Shenanigans
• Video: “This guy’s going to go 1-3” – Hafu
• Video: [Kripparrian] The Big Problems In Hearthstone
• Video: [Kibler] Forgive Me, RNGesus
• Video: Yogg from 1HP
• Video: Boogey Boy
• Video: Journey to Un’goro – Expectation vs Reality
• Video: Google doesn’t know who Toast is
• Video: Five Minutes of Awful Hearthstone Jokes
• Video: Kibler putting a target on his face
• Video: Hafu’s revealed card doesn’t betray her
• Video: Ratsmah with his lethal
• Video: Thijs plays dirty rat at turn 2
• Video: Reynad with the talent
• Video: Can I get an Ice Block, please?
• Video: Hearthstone in 15 Seconds!
• Video: …And This is Why You Never Concede
• Video: Firebat’s Deck Doctor #2: White Eyes Shaman
• Video: Deck Doctor #3 with Firebat!
• Video: Priest Mirage Caller OTK
• Video: Hearthstone Mythbusters 34

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!