June 26, 2016 - hearthstone, tavern brawl

Pick a Hand, Any Hand Tavern Brawl

Tavern Brawl Rules

Pick the first seven cards of your deck, and we'll fill the rest with Unstable Portals. You get your portals AFTER your mulligan.

Basically, you'll build a 7 card deck for this brawl. After you get your initial hand, the game will add Unstable Portals to fill out the rest of your deck. This means you are guarenteed to see 3-4 of the 7 cards you choose in your opening hand.

This Tavern Brawl is relies heavily on RNG/luck, so don't over estimate Unstable Portal. I had opponents conceding before I'd even cast Unstable Portal after dropping 2x Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Solid Cards

Generally speaking, Gadgetzan Auctioneer and Violet Teacher provides a lot of value. Stonesplinter Trogg, Burly Rockjaw Trogg, and Troggzor the Earthinator help shut down your opponent's game plan.

As with most tavern brawls, removal is always good (especially with the randomness of Unstable Portal). Assassinate, Polymorth, Hex, Naturalize, etc. are good fillers for your deck.

Classes

Mage, druid, and rogue are very strong for this brawl, but every class is somewhat viable.

Mage

Sorcerer's Apprentice is usuallly enough to win, but you can set up for the dream with 2x Sorcerer's Apprentice and Gadgetzan Auctioneer for virtually unlimited Unstable Portals.

Druid

Use Innervate to ramp into some sort of Trogg or Innervate into Astral Communion for value creatures from Unstable Portal. The trogg variation is safer, but Astral Communion has a higher upside.

Rogue

Mulligan hard for Edwin VanCleef and set up a 14/14 Edwin on turn 2 or 3 and use Conceal to protect him.

Priest

Just use the Divine Spirit/Inner Fire combo to win the game with a Deathlord. Replace Deathlord with Shieldbearer if you don't have the Naxx expansion.

Warrior

Just use equipment to answer your opponent's Unstable Portal (you're almost always guarenteed to 2 for 1 with them). You're playing the long game, so the extra armor from Justicar will be valuable.

Paladin

This deck tries to answer your opponent's Unstable Portals. Equality/Wild Pyromancer for board clear, Peacekeeper to shut down high damage threats, and Coghammer tries to protect your high value minions.

Shaman

Stormforged Axe and/or Lightning Storm knocks out the early threats and win by playing the value game with Evolve/Master of Evolution.

Hunter

Basically, choose your favorite remove spells and play the long game.

Warlock

Same gameplan as the hunter, just without the Hunter's Mark (so just worse).

Renounce Darkness gets a nod here just because of the unique interaction if you are lucky enough to get Mage as your replacement: all of your Unstable Portals cost 1 instead of 2 (it's not really worth playing the card though).