Hearthstone: TGT Tavern Brawl

Hearthstone: Grand Tournament Tavern Brawl

Well, might as well as talk about this for a bit. It’s been out for a couple of days, but this week’s Tavern Brawl is, pretty ingenuously, a little sneak peek at the cards that are going to be released for the Grand Tournament. A sneak update has already placed all the data and you can actually see the full set of the cards in the Crafting menu (though obviously you can’t craft them yet) so if you haven’t been following the news in all the fansites, well, there you go.

But we finally get to see and hear all the voices for two entire decks prepared just for this little Tavern Brawl sneak peek, which is awesome. In a completely controlled situation where only two decks exist, some relatively sub-par cards actually shine really well. And in addition to all the brand-new Grand Tournament cards, we’re also fighting with two out of three paid hero skins: Medivh and Alleria. And honestly a couple of matches are really all you need to fully appreciate the modified animations and all the new quotes… so save your money from buying the hero skins, if it isn’t obvious enough.

The Grand Tournament board is also snuck into the regular board pool, though honestly it’s a bit of a letdown IMO – nothing too fun to muck around with like the GvG and Blackrock Mountain boards. We kind of need more boards.

Anyway before I went on a tangent back there, the Tavern Brawl itself randomly gives you one of two decks – Medivh’s Mage deck, which is filled with cards correlating to the Inspire mechanic, and Alleria’s Hunter deck, which is filled with cards correlating to the Jousting mechanic. Obviously that’s not all the individual decks have to offer – Alleria’s got a fair amount of beast synergy cards thrown in for good measure as well.

It gets a bit predictable after a while, especially since I had to go through a daily quest which makes me win five Tavern Brawl matches, but it certainly is fun to experience so many new cards at once. There were a couple that I really liked – the Evil Heckler’s voice-overs are hilarious, Lock and Load is as fun as I’d hoped, Saraad is awesome in its random effects, the Skeleton Knight is hilariously hammy, the Refreshment Vendor is both funny and actually viable, the Ram Wrangler and the Bear Trap are both great cards to play around. Again, the decks there doesn’t have the best synergy for balance issues so both Mage and Hunter have equal chances to win, but it’s still pretty fun.

With three days to go before the big TGT release, thanks to some bad arena runs where I got dust instead of gold, plus my moment of weakness when I purchased the Naxxramas wing (I really need to get around completing all the Adventure Mode levels after this) I’ve collected around enough gold to buy 8 TGT packs, and I do hope I get some really good stuff from there. I mean, a couple of Legendaries would definitely be nice, but I really do want some really nice, solid cards to include in my decks. Oh, and of course, the freaking Murloc Knight. Can't wait to open those booster packs!