by JR Cook - 11 years ago     show comments

The Hearthstone team has put out a new Fireside Duel – this time in the form of Jaina vs. Thrall (mage deck vs. shaman deck).

Some interesting points in this game – this is the first time we see how the secret cards work. Basically you play them, they cost mana, your opponent sees you have played something but it’s unknown to them what you played. When your opponent does something to trigger the secret card then it activates and says what it does. In the case of this game the card was activated when the opponent attacked with their minion and the effect in place was the player who played the secret got a copy of the minion card that attacked.

The shaman deck in this case looks seriously fun to play (if not a bit overpowered) as the random totem ability and his wolf cards are really good. He does a pretty good job of overpowering the opponent with minions. The mage deck seems to focus more on direct damage spells like fireball and blizzard and I can see that deck also being very powerful depending on the situation.

With that said you can watch the entire duel below with commentary from Hearthstone developer Ben Brode.