Hearthstone is Getting New Ranked Rewards, New "Joust" Mechanic

[Steven Bogos]

Hearthstone is Getting New Ranked Rewards, New "Joust" Mechanic

New features and cards for Hearthstone's upcoming Grand Tournament expansion have been revealed at Gamescon.

Blizzard has dropped a tonne of new information for its upcoming explained Blizzard [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/hearthstone].

Next, it looks like the "Inspire" mechanic won't be the only new mechanic added in The Grand Tournament. The new "Joust" mechanic is something that rewards players for stacking their decks with lots of high-cost minions. "Minions Joust by emerging from their decks, creating a brief contest within a contest wherein players each reveal a (random) minion from their deck. In order to win, the minion who initiated the Joust must reveal a minion with a higher mana cost. The rewards are varied based on the minion starting the Joust, but players will want to emerge victorious from the lists as often as possible!"

Check out all of the 56 cards revealed for the expansion so far, including several with the new Joust mechanic, below:

[gallery=4492]

Still no word on when the expansion will officially launch, apart from "later this month," but if you're particularly eager you can go ahead and pre-purchase [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19819219/the-grand-tournament-pre-purchase-bundle-7-29-2015] a 50-pack of Grand Tournament boosters for a discount and an exclusive card-back.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19817948/the-grand-tournament-at-gamescom-8-5-2015]

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[Erttheking]

Hm. The joust thing is mildly interesting, but I am rather interested in more rewards from ranked. I'll wade into that deathpit if it means I get shiny shit.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Hm. The joust thing is mildly interesting, but I am rather interested in more rewards from ranked. I'll wade into that deathpit if it means I get shiny shit.

You already got shiny shit (golden heroes).

How do you only find jousting to be mildly interesting though? It has the potential to entirely throw the meta on it's head. Aggro has always been overwhelmingly powerful since Hearthstone's inception, but Joust finally provides a means for control decks to fight back against aggro effectively. Since aggro is predominately low cost minions, winning Jousts shouldn't prove to be too difficult but the rewards are substantial for most of the cards that have been revealed thus far.

 

[Erttheking]

Hm. The joust thing is mildly interesting, but I am rather interested in more rewards from ranked. I'll wade into that deathpit if it means I get shiny shit.

You already got shiny shit (golden heroes).

How do you only find jousting to be mildly interesting though? It has the potential to entirely throw the meta on it's head. Aggro has always been overwhelmingly powerful since Hearthstone's inception, but Joust finally provides a means for control decks to fight back against aggro effectively. Since aggro is predominately low cost minions, winning Jousts shouldn't prove to be too difficult but the rewards are substantial for most of the cards that have been revealed thus far.

Something that didn't require me to win 500 matches. Too little of a reward for too much work.

It's just kinda cool, that's all. You've got a point there though. I'll probably be making one or two new decks (after I actually get some of the expansion cards)

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Jousting or what most of the Hearthstone community calls it fuck you face Hunter.

 

[Tiamattt]

The rewards thing is awesome news, gives me more reason to push myself when in the past I could've easily settled since there was no difference past 20. Here's hoping I make it to at least rank 5(the apparent max rank for the new prizes) this season.

Joust is....interesting. I love high cost fatties as much as the next Timmy but I have to wonder how many do you need in your deck to reliably get joust off while not getting bad early hands, especially against other control decks. Also here's hoping for better joust minions since a bigger yet not as reliable Healbot/Sunwalker isn't really going to cut it.

 

[gonenow3]

Jousting or what most of the Hearthstone community calls it fuck you face Hunter.

People did the maths and jousting is actually terrible and won't work. Against face decks its a 80% chance to win but against hybrid it drops to 60 and against midrange it drops to 40%

Aka its far too inconsistent to ever be used as a anti aggro tool and at the end of the day other than the tuskar one all of them lack the raw stats to be useful anyway. Essentially the joust mechanic looks cool but it'll never be usable in arena and it won't be used in constructed higher ranks.

Also its a super dead mechanic in control vs control so I don't see this mechanic working out

 

[Abomination]

I don't like the idea of throwing more RNG at the game.

Now you roll to roll on a roll? It's a bit silly.

I do like the ranked rewards though.

 

[Kahani]

I quite like the look of this. Plenty of interesting and potentially useful cards, and not a lot that is obviously useless crap. I especially like the focus on interaction with hero powers. Some of the inspire abilities are nice, but obviously are slow to ramp, while the buffs to powers have potential to be insanely good, but are stuck on minions and so can obviously be countered.

Not so sure about joust though. Most of the bonuses look fairly weak; +1 durability on a 2/2 for 2 weapon isn't exactly game changing. I think they'll largely be handy if the minion would fit in your deck anyway and you happen to pull it off, but I don't see anything worth trying to build a deck around. Maybe nice for druid ramp decks and giants, but you're not going to counter a rush deck by occasionally getting +1/+1 or a small heal.

 

[totheendofsin]

It looks interesting, not sure how well it'll do in practice but I like it in theory

Now when can I open my 50 packs?

 

[The Wykydtron]

Now I don't have much of an idea how this new Joust thing will shake up the meta (probably not at all because aggro has been stupid good in Hearthstone since the dawn of the game) but... I see that Aviana. The dream of playing Neffy, Ysera and Malygos followed by an overpowered Flamestrike/Holy Nova (because her 5/5 stats will probably be better off in Priest) is real.

I see what Trump means, a large amount of the new cards are "pseudo taunt" I mean yeah go face when I just played Aviana, it's your funeral.

I'm in for Priest having more cards, his new class cards look really good. Upgraded Lightwarden will give some free wins i'm sure.

 

[Janaschi]

Ahhhh - I can just imagine it:

Turn 9 rolls around, I throw out Aviana, and I use both the Coin and Innervate to throw down a taunt and the legendaries that I have had hiding in my hand for the entire game.

But then... what is this -legasp-! My Paladin opponent uses Equality and Consecrate.

Knowing my luck, something like this will happen during every game that I manage to pull this combo off.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Joust looks really bad. An entire mechanic based around RNG is just awful. Especially when most of the card have better options without the risk. Assuming they go into control orientated decks as a way to counter aggro:

Gadgetzan Jouster -why would you play this over Zombie Chow? If you're playing control, you don't really care about the draw back so having this card potentially be a 1/2 is awful.

Armored Warhorse -Assuming that this would be used as part of a finisher (because you really shouldn't be trying to use it for removal since there are much better options), why not just use the cheaper Arcane Golem that only has 1 less attack and an irrelevant downside?

Master Jouster -Why not just play Sunwalker? It has zero risk and it also doesn't die to Shadow Word: Death.

Skeleton Knight -Waaaay too slow of a card. The meta would have to be ridiculously slow for this thing to be useful. 4 health dies to the most common 4 drop in the game and in general is just way too easily removed. Who cares if you get to play him again? Your opponent will just laugh at you as you waste your turns playing garbage.

Argent Lance -All of Paladin's other weapons are quite a bit better. Coghammer being the best direct comparison makes this card laughable.

Tuskarr Jouster -I'd rather play Antique Healbot. It heals 1 more, has a body big enough to usually deal with at least one of the things an aggro deck is throwing at you, and it doesn't have the downside of potentially costing you the game. If you are in a situation where you need the heal, losing the joust is devastating. In that case, it doesn't matter if this has better stats.

I don't think I'll be buying any card packs this time (I caved and spent 50 on GvG). I have enough dust to easily craft the few cards they've shown that are actually playable. You can tell they want to push the game to a slower meta with this expansion, but just making a lot more slow cards doesn't mean that'll happen. It might slow down briefly while everyone tries to make Inspire decks work, but then it'll speed right back up once people start getting farmed by the aggro decks again.

Aviana is a very cool card and might bring ramp Druid to the forefront of the class instead of the same old mid-range combo deck. I firmly believe that if you put a 9 mana card into your deck, it needs to be brokenly OP and give you a good chance at winning the game. This card probably is just that.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I see that Aviana. The dream of playing Neffy, Ysera and Malygos followed by an overpowered Flamestrike/Holy Nova (because her 5/5 stats will probably be better off in Priest) is real.

She's only in Druid

Also, something that was confirmed on Twitter:

If you play her and your hand has minions that have had their cost reduced by Emperor Thaurissan, those cards will cost 0 instead of 1.

 

[Ukomba]

'Aviana' / 'Master of Disguise' combo.

 

[RaikuFA]

I don't like the idea of throwing more RNG at the game.

Now you roll to roll on a roll? It's a bit silly.

I do like the ranked rewards though.

WE GOTTA ROLL DEEPER INTO THIS!!!

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

I don't like the idea of throwing more RNG at the game.

Now you roll to roll on a roll? It's a bit silly.

I do like the ranked rewards though.

WE GOTTA ROLL DEEPER INTO THIS!!!

you forgot the....

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Hm. The joust thing is mildly interesting, but I am rather interested in more rewards from ranked. I'll wade into that deathpit if it means I get shiny shit.

You already got shiny shit (golden heroes).

How do you only find jousting to be mildly interesting though? It has the potential to entirely throw the meta on it's head. Aggro has always been overwhelmingly powerful since Hearthstone's inception, but Joust finally provides a means for control decks to fight back against aggro effectively. Since aggro is predominately low cost minions, winning Jousts shouldn't prove to be too difficult but the rewards are substantial for most of the cards that have been revealed thus far.

I wish, but in order to reliably win the joust, your deck must be a pretty mana heavy deck, meaning that while you win the jousts, the aggro deck will just ignore it and go for face before your heavier cards hit the field. Joust seems to encourage decks to get slower, which means faster decks get even more time to spare.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I'm not sure I follow the logic of the people saying that all of this will finally cause a control-centric meta. Control has always had insanely powerful cards but the reason they don't get played is because it's impossible to stem the tide of a faster deck long enough to find a turn you can safely put them to the board without instantly dying. I see nothing about the Joust cards so far that will change that. There's still a lot of expansion to go, and hopefully there will be cards that actually enable these powerhouses to be playable.

In short: (as is) no matter how powerful new Control-oriented cards are they won't see play, much less shift the meta. Anti-aggro and Anti-combo cards are what would cause a meta-shift, and we haven't seen anywhere close to enough cards that actually slow the game down so Yseras and the like can be played. If you aren't constantly affecting the board the faster deck gets a turn ahead on tempo and kills you, or a combo deck gets the time it needs to explode and kill you.

Personally that's what I most hope for from this expansion: something that finally puts an end to these damn solitaire decks (Freeze Mage, Patron Warrior, most flavours of Hunter). Note that 'put an end to' doesn't necessarily mean erase, just something that actually makes it interactive, like more Malganis/Loatheb type cards, something that disrupts charge, something like a reverse-Thaurissan(Make enemy hand more expensive). Just something that can actually counter them without being a tech card unplayable as anything but a hate card (yes yes Kezan Mystic wrecks Freeze Mage and gets value vs other mages and sometimes hunter, but you don't always draw her and she actively makes your deck worse vs everything else)

 

[Ukomba]

This joust mechanics seem to primarily be a counter to Zoo decks as they will almost always loose the joust. Also useful for ramp druids who's average card cost is higher.