Everyone get in here! Hearthstone‘s Grand Tournament has begun and this is one you surely don’t want to miss. The second expansion to Blizzard’s online TCG game, the GT brings a variety of wicked spells, Murlocs, knights and even more ogres to shake up the current meta with 132 all new cards.
The Grand Tournament also brings a couple new mechanics to Hearthstone, adding to the complexity of the game. Certain cards will now contain a game mechanic called “Inspire”, enabling you to activate the Inspire effect you need to use your hero power. The effects can range from gaining Windfury to spawning a 1/1 Silver Recruit — these type of cards will undeniably add value to your deck. I don’t foresee decks being solely based around inspire; the cards aren’t strong enough on their own but without a doubt each deck should contain some. I can see mage decks gaining the most use out of inspire, with Fallen Hero card and other synergistic cards around hero power. If you were able to play Tavern Brawl before the release, you witnessed what it’s able to do.
Secondly, they’ve added a type of joust mechanic into the game to specific cards which goes great with the Grand Tournament theme. Now only the player who puts this card into play gains the effect, if and when both players reveal one card from their deck and if you had the higher mana cost from each of these cards you would gain this effect. It is a bit of a gamble to play these types of cards but if you had a high enough mana curve you could win the majority of these tiny encounters. Either way that deck would play extremely slow, though, the best part of this is the ability to gain some knowledge to what type of deck your opponent is running.
For the past 5 months the meta has been dominated by zoolock, patron warrior, aggro pally, face hunter, and freeze mage decks. There’s one major theme here, and aggro seems to have been dominate, with not a lot of ways to counter it. Since the launch I’ve been seeing a lot of control decks with all of the new cards in the top tier, which is great to see new decks and ideas come to fruition. All of the new dragon cards — and the legendary Confessor Paletress — make me think that Control Priest might be the new fan favorite out there. Having Twilight Guardian played on turn 3 with Coin or turn 4 will slow down a lot of players, and Refreshment Vendor has a lot of upside (giving both players 4 health) to help heal you when you’re strictly controlling the board in constructed play.
Though I can’t review all 132 cards in the new expansion, I will say the majority of them aren’t that great and some of them you won’t ever use in constructed. One of my absolute favorites is Varian Wrynn: warrior class, 10 cost, legendary. He’s a 7/7 that allows you to draw 3 cards and put them directly into play; this has amazing value because you can imagine drawing 3 high cost cards and putting them directly into play, shifting the entire game into your favor. Another new card is Eydis Darkbane, a 3 cost, 3/4 that deals 3 damage to a random enemy when you target it with a spell. I love this card, as will work great in Priest/Shaman/Pally decks, and is another card useful to slow down aggro decks. The newest secret to mage decks is Effigy, which spawns a random same cost minion that just died. This gives mage decks more control of what card they can get, unlike Mirror Entity, where players could play around it. Pally secret decks can now be a thing, as Mysterious Challenger (6 cost, 6/6) summons 1 of every secret in your deck into play. Watching all 5 secrets pop at one time is enough anxiety to make you want to concede. It’s quite the spectacle.
Lastly, ranked play will now be more rewarding and give players more incentive to work at climbing the ladder. After every month a chest will be awarded to players that reach level 20 or higher. This will include the card back for that month, golden cards and arcane dust. It’s rumored that the size of your spoils will be dependent upon your rank, and will increase in size every 5 levels that you climb.
The Grand Tournament awaits your arrival, now it’s time to dismantle all of your current decks and get to work.
No Comments