Brawlers - Decks Assemble!

Rule of the Week

“All of Azeroth wants to brawl for you! Start with a small deck, recruit as you go, then send them to fight over and over!”

Nice rule this week with the reprise of this Tavern Brawl. If you didn’t play it in December, then it’s time to try it. You can barely try any class you want as you’re going to create your deck while turns pass. But as we’ll see later, the class we choose will influence the strategy we have to adopt.

You’ll start with a small random deck of 8 cards with the following options: 4 Chicken (not the one in the image, unfortunately they cost 1), 1 Whirling Blades (Spare part +1 Attack), 1 Armor Plating (Spare part +1 Health) and 2 Tarnished Coin (like the-coin). When the game starts you receive a hand of four cards. Second player will also have the-coin.

Every time someone plays a card, it goes back to the deck (exception: the-coin, the original one, not the Tarnished versions). Every card you have in your hand at the end of your turn will go back to the deck as well and you will receive a new hand of four cards at that moment.

Besides all this, every turn instead of drawing, you will Discover a random card. Obviously the options you will receive are among neutral and your class cards. You won’t keep the card you pick on your hand, you have to play it that turn or thanks to the rule it will go to your deck and you’ll receive a new fresh hand. So it’ll be harder to plan turns in advance as you know which cards you could receive but you never know if you’re going to receive them.

In the beginning of the game, your deck will be slim and chances of getting cards are bigger, but as turns go by, the deck will grow and it’ll be harder to get the cards you have there. You will always have Chickens and Spare parts, useful in the beginning, but a bit annoying when you draw them in the late game.

Some tricks:

When you play a “Joust” card, you could show a copy of that card when jousting, as the copy goes to your deck before Battlecry triggers.
Your hand will be shuffled into your deck before you receive a new hand. So it’s useless to not play cards in order to avoid receiving them the following turn. It won’t work.
There’s no real draw at the end of each turn or after the “Discover” phase. Effects like chromaggus won’t work. They will still work if we use draw effect cards such as novice-engineer or Warlock’s Hero Power, in this case creating duplicates of the card and doubling the options to receive them in the future. But as everything here is hidden we don’t know what we are going to copy.
If you have less than 4 cards in your deck (fel-reaver effect, for instance), you will draw duplicates of the remaining cards in your deck.
There’s no limit on the deck’s size.
As I said, the-coin doesn’t go back to your deck. If you play a Tarnished version, it will go back to your deck and you can draw it again. If you play The Coin, it will disappear. Maybe you want to have it for later turns, maybe you don’t want to see it again. Now you know it, play it or not accordingly.

Cards of the week

hobgoblin: If you have the opportunity of picking this card, do it! He will change your little chickens into big ostriches. Your deck will have 3-4 chickens so it’s very useful. And you could plan your further turns picking more 1-Attack creatures if you want. But don’t rely too much on this minion, as it’s easy to kill.

I remember a game of last december. I picked two of them and I have it every turn in my hand. When I manage to have three of them on board, my opponent conceded, even not having played a single “chicken”.

elise-starseeker: When you play it, Map and Elise will go to your deck. Next turn you will receive a new hand and you could find the Map or the copied Elise. Play the first and you will have Golden Monkey and another Map in your deck for the following turn. Play the second and you’ll have two Maps and a new Elise. You will end finding the Golden Monkey and then, enjoy with your full legendary deck. Discovered cards will keep being non-legendary cards (or legendary sometimes) but you’ll have enough bombs for sure in your deck and more important, no more fried chicken.

Discover cards: Your deck will grow faster if you pick and play Discover cards. You will choose the best of three options so the average quality of your deck will become higher than your opponent’s one. This will diminish as well the chances of getting the initial cards in the mid-late game.

Discard cards: Don’t you like bad cards? Then try with the discard path. Discarded cards will disappear from your deck. You won’t have to worry about chickens anymore.

beneath-the-grounds: An anti-rule card. It will give your opponent three Ambush cards. As he won’t draw them, you won’t receive the Nerubian minion and he won’t draw another card. But if you keep playing it, your opponent’s deck will be full of Ambushes and his “draws” will be useless (except the discovered card of the turn). It’s a fun way of not losing this week, denying his draws, but you still have to kill your opponent.

curse-of-rafaam: Another anti-rule card. Now things are funnier but a bit slower. The turn you play it, your opponent will receive the Cursed! card. He will take 2 damage in his turn. And the card will go back to its library. At the end of his turn, he will receive a new 4-card hand. Maybe Cursed! is there again, so 2 more damage and more important, one card less to play. Full your opponent’s deck with Cursed! cards and have fun.

General tips

What to choose the first turns? Good question. Here we could think in two ways:

You will probably play chickens and maybe grow them with Spare parts so picking low-cost cards won’t help you too much in the early game. Don’t abuse picking cheap cards unless you’re going to play the fast way. If cheap cards are awful and you’re presented a late game card or big legendary, don’t hesitate and pick it. At least the first time. You won’t play it that turn, you maybe won’t play it the next time you draw it, but it could make the difference in the late game and now you know you have it in your deck.
Try to make a fast start and avoid the late game. Pick low-cost minions and fill the board quickly to gain control of it. Keep spamming minions until finishing your opponent. Pick Charges if you are given the opportunity and go face as fast as you can without losing board control. A big board presence in the early game could be enough to take the upper hand. You could win before big threats hit the board.

I have to confess that it’s hard to make a great aggro deck, it will depend on the class you choose, but three options every turn could be enough and you will face lots of players that decide to play aggro. I won lots of games this way so it’s feasible. So I would try this approach for current Tavern Brawl but taking always into account that if the game goes longer we will have to switch our strategy on time or our tiny creatures won’t be enough to finish the game.

What is really important this week is controlling the board. Whether you choose the aggro path or the control one, don’t forget about board. It’s really hard to get it back if you lose it. First turns will define most of the times the whole game. So play hard to get the board and victory will come.

As I said before, Discover cards are a great option to fill your deck with better cards. There are others such as webspinner or sometimes gorillabot-a-3 that could fit this description, but now chances of getting a good minion are lower (one random result instead of three options) so be careful with them.

explorers-hat is a great way to open a millinery shop. I tried it once with a fast Hunter deck and I was lucky enough to win that game. The last turns I only had hats and the Discovered card. Fortunately, I always had a minion to put the hats on (imagine a Chicken with a hat tower, heheh). I wouldn’t try it again, up to you.

toshley, clockwork-gnome or even tinkertown-technician will fill your deck with Spare parts, so be careful with all of them. At least, mechanical-yeti will give a Spare part to your opponent as well. If I have to fill my deck with a card I would choose archmage-antonidas and receive tons of fireballs. Now it sounds better.

Review of some classes

In the opening paragraph I said that you can try with every class, but there are some strategies that fit better with certain classes so it’s not totally true. Every game we will have to face the RNG but we are molding our deck since the first turn so don’t blame on RNG, you can do a lot to diminish its effects.

First thing we have to know is that we won’t use Hero Power this week very much. As we are building our decks we will try to play the Discovered card every turn and we will have Chickens or Spare parts to get rid of remaining crystals, so there could nearly always be a better option than Hero Power. Would you put a Chicken for one Crystal or a Soldier? Are you going to draw a card that you won’t use?

Hunter: Here the fast path is a real deal, choose it and finish your games with your Hero Power. I nearly played only Rexxar in December and won a lot of games. I don’t remember the exact win rate but believe me when I say it was ridiculously high. Now I’m trying other strategies with other classes just to find more ways to win.

One card that can easily be overlooked is tracking. It will give you the chance of discarding the worst two options and you won’t draw them ever again. It’s a good idea to keep track of your bad cards before Tracking your deck. No, I’m not joking. Do it. Writing the number down is enough. This way you will avoid losing good cards in the late game. With a single copy of Tracking you can go aggro in the early game and have reach in the late game.

Remember that chickens are beasts and Rexxar has synergies with beasts. Among cards that have this synergy I will highlight scavenging-hyena, houndmaster, kill-command and ram-wrangler. It’s important to note that the beast we receive with the last one won’t go to the deck, so it won’t care if we receive a bad one.

We also have the option of Unleash-the-hounds to eat Chickens or keep going the fast way.

Mage: Now we have synergies with Spells. Cards such as mana-wyrm and flamewaker will give us more benefits from Spare parts and Coins. Even archmage-antonidas will help us creating free fireballs that will end in our decks. Hero power will help killing Chickens while we center our game in killing our opponent.

Druid: Malfurion has an interesting card, astral-communion. If you play it early (you can play it even in the first turn if you have enough Coins), effects could be devastating. You don’t care about losing your hand, even better, you will prefer to get rid of chickens and Spare Parts.

Play Astral Comunion and then enjoy picking the high-cost cards. Big Taunts, Legendaries. Whatever. Bomb after bomb and you will win for sure. Don’t pick other ramp cards, you already have Coins and you won’t want them in the late game at all.

power-of-the-wild will grow your Chickens and you will clean opponents board.

Anyway, it’s a hard class to play. We all know that AoE damage is weak and if we lose control of the board it will be hard to get it back with Druid.

Warlock: I’m afraid that the Hero Power is near useless this week. You have to play the card you draw the same turn you draw it or it will just suppose a loss of life. If you need a card to survive and you know you have a copy in your deck, you could try, but most of the time you won’t play Hero Power.

With Gul’dan you have the opportunity of playing the discard strategy. soulfire every turn and clean your deck. Play succubus and you’ll have a big creature since the beginning and a better deck. doomguard and dark-bargain for the late turns and get rid of early cards you don’t want anymore. You also have curse-of-rafaam, try it if you have the opportunity…

Paladin: Again Hero Power is a bit senseless while we have Chickens in hand. But we have two very known creatures that we will enjoy playing recurrently: aldor-peacekeeper and keeper-of-uldaman. We also have the best two drop, shielded-minibot. “Infinite” Divine Shield bots will annoy the opponent. dragon-consort is also an interesting card. The first one will cost five, the rest will cost three unless we pick a better dragon and include it in our deck. Anyway, 5/5s for three will be good.

Here I have a crazy idea that I want to try. It’s senseless, I know, but I’ll try it. Fill my deck with secrets and pick a Mysterious Challenger. It can be epic! (But if I don’t get the Challenger it’s going to be useless, heheh).

I will leave the other classes to you. Please, feel free of leaving comments and share your thoughts if you play them.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts for current Tavern Brawl? I’ve read too many comments against it and I think it’s more complicated than it seems, not only RNG dependant. You have to build your deck and all the cards you choose will come back again and again so if your decisions are bad you will regret the whole game.

I know I’ll play it a lot if I have the opportunity during this weekend.

Have fun!

Edit: Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the deck has 4 Chicken, 1 Whirling Blades (Spare part +1 Attack), 1 Armor Plating (Spare part +1 Health) and 2 Tarnished Coin.