by hsdecktech - 7 years ago     show comments

This week, Hearthstone’s Tavern Brawl is the previously announced Wild-Format Heroic Tavern Brawl!

The weekend is nearly upon us, which means that the second wave of Heroic Tavern Brawls–the wave that includes us plebs with normal jobs and/or school taking up our week days, as well as those of us who just want to avoid getting smashed on a pro’s stream–is about to begin.

This is one of many recent steps taken by Blizzard to make Wild much more relevant. Of course, the first step was the early-April standard rotation in which Standard and Wild felt their first big split, whereby major archetypes and several powerful cards were made no longer available to Standard players. The stakes were upped again when, on April 28th, the official Hearthstone Esports twitter announced that the top 64 May Wild ladder finishers would be invited to an official Blizzard Wild tournament.

All said, a lot of players who had previously seen no reason to play Wild decided to give it a try. But there are still plenty of people who want to try the Wild Heroic Brawl and don’t know where to start. Don’t worry; we’ve got you.

I. What’s Good in Wild?

The Competitive Hearthstone Reddit, the cesspool of hate that it sometimes can be, has had a longstanding commitment to the Wild Meta. They have an ongoing Wild tierlist that they update at least every month, here. Not to miss out on the attention that comes with a Heroic Tavern Brawl, Tempo Storm published its most recent meta snapshot just earlier today, here.

Looking at those and other sources, there seems to be a consensus that Pirate Warrior and RenoLock are the top two, tier 1 decks. All the meta snapshots also appear to agree on the next three decks, though there is some disagreement on both the order in which they should be ranked and on which should be considered tier 1 and which should be considered tier 2. Regardless of the exact order or tier classification, it seems Control Shaman, Egg Druid, and Reno Mage are considered the next best decks. Of note: there is some major disagreement as to the power level of the former-menace, Secret Paladin, which Reddit put in the middle of tier 2 whereas Tempo Storm placed it in tier 4.

[wcp_deck id=21139]

[wcp_deck id=21176]

[wcp_deck id=21187]

II. What has been Winning in the Heroic Tavern Brawl?

Meta snapshots are all well and good, but the Heroic Tavern Brawl meta is always a bit different from the Standard ladder meta. Luckily, all the pros jumped into Heroic Tavern Brawl as soon as it was live so we’ve had a whole day of results to analyze. There’s a running list of pro runs in the competitive Hearthstone reddit, including end results, decklists, and VODs, here.

Unlike the first Heroic Tavern Brawl (in which everyone was running Tylerootd’s midrange shaman list), it looks like the pros are having fun playing all kinds of decks. If there is one most common build, it looks to be Vlps’s N’Zoth Control Shaman list, which has also seen some success on the Wild ladder. We have also seen some people having success with Freeze Mage. Another interesting trend seems to be that there is not very much Pirate Warrior OR RenoLock, the two decks that the meta reports agreed were the two best decks in the format. As the meta reports predicted, Secret Paladin has not done well at all.

[wcp_deck id=21195]

III. But Can You Afford to Play Wild? (Actually, yeah, maybe)

First, if you’re considering entering the Heroic Tavern Brawl, but concerned about the cost of making a Wild deck, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give you our usual Heroic Tavern Brawl warning. Heroic Tavern Brawl is tough, and is usually a losing proposition (at least, in terms of prizes). Converting prizes to gold value, you still need about 6 wins (66% winrate) to “break even”; 10 wins (~77% winrate) to get a golden legendary; and the full 12 wins (over 85% winrate) to get your gold back. Most players end up with less than 60% winrate at the end of each ladder season.

Now that that is out of the way, Ray Walkinshaw–famous on Twitter as @Blisterguy for his Hearthstone infographs and, to a slightly lesser degree, for his Walk to Work Hearthstone podcast–was gracious enough to let us use some of his work regarding the cost of going Wild (entering the format, that is, not the cost of the ticket and the blemish on your soul for what you did last spring break). He breaks down some of the top decks, using common decklists, and highlights what cards are exclusively in Wild, so you have an idea how much dust you’d need to make the move.

The full size infograph can be found here, along with a few other of his hits.

Wild Hearthstone is more affordable than you think!

Of important note: the decklists depicted are from Wild immediately prior to the release of Un’Goro. They are intended to give you an idea of how much Wild costs, not what decks to bring. Refer to the sections above for more on what decks you should bring.

The takeaway is that many top decks, such as Pirate Warrior, Egg Druid, and Freeze Mage, are only a few cards different from their standard and/or pre-rotation standard counterparts. On top of that, a lot of the cards you might be missing, such as Ship’s Cannon, Haunted Creeper, Deathlord, and Sludge Belcher, are pretty cheap to craft as well.

In fact, the continued validity of Pirate warrior across two formats, three metas (MSG pre-nerf, MSG post-nerf, and Un’Goro), and several months, might just make this the most budget-friendly Hearthstone has ever been–so long as you’re willing to play Pirates.