Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: 11-16 May
“The Innkeeper is wondering which two cards work best together. Show him – choose 2 cards and we’ll fill your deck with them!” It’s the Tavern Brawl for 11-16 May: Top 2!
Wait… what?? This Tavern Brawl has the potential to be completely nuts. Tavern Brawls are released in the US at around 5 p.m. UK time on Wednesdays, and for the first time, my Twitter feed was filled with Tavern Brawl-related pics. Usually, I don’t look at the Tavern Brawl at all the night before, but I had a quick look at what the Tavern Brawl description was; I couldn’t help but try and think of which two cards I could use. Obviously, players with a lot more cards than me have many potential synergies to choose from; just look at WowCrendor’s ridiculous Innervate-Yogg Saron combo he did. This week’s Tavern Brawl has you build a deck, except this week you only choose two cards and then your deck is filled with both. Let hilarity ensue until Monday.
So when I hit play on the Tavern Brawl I just sat there still clueless on which two cards to pick, and I wondered whether games will go really quickly or whether they would take ages. I think with this Tavern Brawl you can probably tell if you’re going to win or lose once you’ve seen your opponents two cards; they may have chosen two cards that just happen to counter the two that you’ve chosen, or they could have gone for two cards creating synergy you didn’t even think of. I’d been thinking about something Mage related with Frost Nova/Frostbolt + Ice Lance, but then I think about these synergies and wonder whether it will work against any of my opponents; will more players go for two minions? Or will more go for two spells? So I thought maybe Sorcerer’s Apprentice and a spell, but what if my opponent has taken a card that can deal with my Sorcerer’s Apprentice? I’m screwed then.
https://youtu.be/Lfr8RTZ584o
In the end, I went for Frostbolt + Ice Lance. I noticed I didn’t have the card draw after a few matches so I switched to Arcane Intellect + Ice Lance. My problem there was that everyone was trying to kill me ASAP, and because the matches were so short I played a lot of them (which you can see in the video). I lost all of these matches to some funny combos: A Druid with Innervate +Â Coldlight Seer; A Mage with Sorcerer’s Apprentice + Frostbolt; A Paladin using Mech Warrior + Pilot Shredder. For what I was doing, I needed longer to build up enough Ice Lances to kill my opponent, but by the time I could get close to doing so I was already pretty dead. So what I feared did happen: opponents chose better combos and ones that I couldn’t stop, but I don’t really care because I just want to play more. So enjoy the video of me losing but coming across pretty neat Top 2’s.
This Tavern Brawl is fantastic; it’s funny, has wonderful potential synergies, and is great for new players to have a laugh with. The only negative is what I mentioned before: it’s very easy to tell if you’re going to win upon seeing their two cards, so I have conceded pretty much on turn one because I can’t do anything against it. I usually judge how good a Tavern Brawl is by whether I’ll keep going back to it whilst it’s up, and for Top 2 I certainly will – even though I’m clearly terrible at it.
