Hearthstone's First Tavern Brawl Pits Ragnaros Against Nefarian

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Hearthstone's First Tavern Brawl Pits Ragnaros Against Nefarian


Hearthstone's first Tavern Brawl features a whole suite of unique, uncollectable cards.

Earlier in the month, we learned that Blizzard's crazy-popular digital card game Hearthstone would be getting a new game mode: Tavern Brawl [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141112-Hearthstones-New-Tavern-Brawl-Gamemode]. At the time, we only knew that Tavern Brawls would feature a new and unique set of rules that would change every week. Now, the first week's Brawl has been revealed - a showdown between Blackrock Mountain bosses Nefarian and Ragnaros, complete with their own suite of unique cards.

Players will be randomly assigned either Ragnaros or Nefarian, and will have to play with a pre-made deck of crazily overpowered cards, finally giving us a taste of what it's like to be a Hearthstone boss.

Check out some of them below:

[gallery=4305]

And the rest of them over at MMO-champion [http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/921-hearthstone-patch-9166-tavern-brawls-new-heroes].

As part of it's launch celebration, simply winning your first Tavern Brawl of the week will reward you with a classic card pack. The Nefarian vs. Ragnaros Brawl will only be around for the next four days, after which, there will be a short delay, and then an entirely new Brawl.

Unlike The Arena, Tavern Brawl is completely free to play, with no additional gold or real money purchase required.

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Bindal

New member
May 14, 2012
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I find it rather hilarious, but Rag is a lot harder to play as than Nef
 

Dalek Caan

Pro-Dalek, Anti-You
Feb 12, 2011
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Nefarian in this Game Mode is clearly the most powerful, that extra Mana at the start is too OP. Still it's really fun.
 

RejjeN

New member
Aug 12, 2009
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Dalek Caan said:
Nefarian in this Game Mode is clearly the most powerful, that extra Mana at the start is too OP. Still it's really fun.
YUP! My first game I coined out Vaelastraz on the first turn, proceeded to play several 6-7 cost cards the turn after. It was a cakewalk from there :p

Another game I put two living bombs on the other guys Vaelastraz, naturally he got reincarnate from his hero ability...
 

Abomination

New member
Dec 17, 2012
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I've found it has so much to do with luck, more so than any other game mode.

That said, it's great fun and something that anyone can get into with the F2P model.
 

Trippy Turtle

Elite Member
May 10, 2010
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So many people are complaining that rag is underpowered but I have a better winrate with him by far.
If you get out grimstone and manage to protect it for a turn or two than its almost auto-win. I've gotten ragnaros off him twice and having two random bolts of 8 damage going to the opponent is just cruel.
Nef can get some crazy starts but with rags board clear he really relies on lucky hero power usage which I just don't get.

As for the mode itself: Its awesome.
 

Slycne

Tank Ninja
Feb 19, 2006
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Trippy Turtle said:
So many people are complaining that rag is underpowered but I have a better winrate with him by far.
If you get out grimstone and manage to protect it for a turn or two than its almost auto-win. I've gotten ragnaros off him twice and having two random bolts of 8 damage going to the opponent is just cruel.
Nef can get some crazy starts but with rags board clear he really relies on lucky hero power usage which I just don't get.

As for the mode itself: Its awesome.
It would be interesting to see the breakdown overall. From my own personal experience I'd mirror the sentiment that Rag is the weaker of the two, but I also think that Rag just needs a specific gameplan where as Nef can just spams expensive dragons. I think there's no denying the blowout potential of Nef's ability though. My first win was unleash the whelps, with random hits on Counter for his Flamestrike and Bloodlust to finish.
 

shintakie10

New member
Sep 3, 2008
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I've slowly gotten used to Rag. Whether or not its possible to win is entirely dependent on getting your absurdly over cost 2 mana cards out and getting the right removal from then on. After that you just need to spam the hell out of your hammer every turn so you can have a better hero power and you can mostly be golden. Important thing you need to do is save some ae removal for when you do get your new hero power because at that point whelps will be coming. There will be so very many whelps. If you don't have your brawl handy or a living bomb handy Nef will wipe the floor with your face.

That being said, if Nef gets lucky by turn 3 with his hero power he can pull out a disgusting amount of damage with those whelps. A board full of 2/2's getting a bloodlust is almost automatic gg. Really if Nef pulls out a Bloodlust with his hero power its almost certainly gg anyway.
 

RedDeadFred

Illusions, Michael!
May 13, 2009
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As others have said, Nef is quite a bit more powerful than Rag. Still, it's quite fun playing with such ridiculously broken decks. It's not too exciting after a few matches, but you get a free pack. I'm looking forward to future brawls. I just hope they involve more deck building and strategy.
 

Kahani

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May 25, 2011
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I'm not so sure either is really more powerful. Nefarion has ridiculous minions, but Rag has ridiculous removal. Nef is probably easier to play since it's really just a case of throwing out the biggest things you can, while Rag is on the defensive responding to what Nef has put on the board. So it's really just a rush deck against a control deck, except both are bigger than usual. As Bindal says, Rag is easier to play, but easy isn't the same as less powerful, it just means you need to think more about what you're doing in order to pull it off. I especially wonder how the win rate will change throughout the week. I'd suspect that Nef will be much better early on, but Rag will catch up as people learn the decks.