Hearthstone's "Heroic Tavern Brawl" Gives You a Chance to Win 50 Packs at Once

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Hearthstone's "Heroic Tavern Brawl" Gives You a Chance to Win 50 Packs at Once

If you go 12 wins in Hearthstone's new "Heroic Brawl", you'll get 50 card packs, three golden Legendaries, and more!

Think you're a "Heroic Tavern Brawl" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/%20hearthstone] lets you do just that. It's the first Tavern Brawl with a cost to enter ($9.99 or 1000 gold) but the rewards are higher than they have ever been. If you can manage to get to 12 wins before suffering three losses, you'll win a whopping 50 card packs, three golden Legendaries, and a boatload of gold and dust!

If you're familiar with the game's Arena mode, then this brawl will sound pretty familiar, however, there is one major difference. While Arena forces to you quickly forge a deck with random cards, Heroic Tavern Brawl allows players to create Standard deck from their existing card pool. Your deck is then "locked in" for the duration of the brawl, which lasts until you either get 12 wins or three losses.

Here's the full list of reward tiers:

[gallery=6571]

Heroic Tavern Brawl will last one week - the same as usual Tavern Brawls, and players will only be allowed to participate a "limited number of times." Blizzard didn't specify when the Brawl would go live, but we can assume it will after tomorrow's scheduled maintenance.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20324471/introducing-heroic-tavern-brawl-10-17-2016]

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Erttheking

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Oct 5, 2011
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Extremely high stakes arena in other words. Interesting, but I suck at arena, so I'm gonna pass.
 

Battenberg

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Aug 16, 2012
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erttheking said:
Extremely high stakes arena in other words. Interesting, but I suck at arena, so I'm gonna pass.
More like high stakes ladder really since you design your own deck from your own card collection. Seems pointless for most players, I imagine it'll mainly be big name streamers/ pros who go in for this for the challenge more than the rewards.
 

Janaschi

Scion of Delphi
Aug 21, 2012
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Not even remotely worth it.

If this was straight up arena with higher stakes, like they are kind of making it out to be, I'd be really interested. It would basically be like the old booster draft tournaments that I would host back when I ran a Pokemon gym. But, not... this is just ladder, which is going to be plagued with the exact same streamlined decks that have made the game so boring to me.

I'm sure a lot of people will have fun, and that this is the perfect kind of brawl for them. But I will definitely be taking a pass.
 

InflatableHippo

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"the house always wins" at its finest. u need to win 12 out of 14 games to get the best prize, thats a 85% winrate and no constructed deck fares over 60%. Stream sniping will be through the roof as its no longer about star rankings. So good job blizzard with your money grubbing bullshit
 

antipunt

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Jan 3, 2009
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mathematically it's a HUGE risk to take, for 1,000 gold per entry with like 3 tries. and i'm including the smaller prizes too, just doesn't seem worth it
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Assuming 1000 gold entry fee, you break even at around 6-7 wins. And since you are using your own decks, this means that the advantage is very much in the hands of people who already have all the cards. Basically, if you are the person who sees this and thinks "Neat, I could really use that!", you're not the person who is going to win.

In short, for most people this might as well read "One week without Tavern Brawl". Considering the last one was kinda shit already, this is a bit sad.
 

loa

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Jan 28, 2012
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Because tying everything to "win x games" isn't frustrating enough already.
 

iblis666

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Sep 8, 2008
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This sounds like a trap to get us casuals to give up 1000g or $10 so we can have our face shredded by some legendary players who have tricked out stream lined decks. Hell no id rather it have been Arena so at least there was some freaking chance for those that actually needed the freaking cards but screw them im using my gold on the solo campaign at least there are a few things i can use there.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Kibeth41 said:
What people don't credit this for though is that you don't have to pay real money for it, which is nice. And 1000 gold isn't really that much.
Here's where I disagree. 1000 gold IS quite a bit, at least from my perspective. I play a few times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I do my quests, I enjoy some arena. That's about it. For me, 1000 gold isn't a small amount. That's several weeks of play (assuming around 300-400 gold per week). That's almost 7 Arena runs.

There's no way in hell I'd pick this over 7 arena runs...

Personally, I feel that they put in gold option just so they could claim they are being fair, but the main goal is to get people to fork over the cash. And I'm not even close to biting on this one. When they did the "Welcome Pack" or whatever it was called a while back, I jumped on that since it was a pretty good deal. This is not. Paying $10 for what is likely going to be zero payout is ridiculous...
 

Kahani

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May 25, 2011
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Jandau said:
Assuming 1000 gold entry fee, you break even at around 6-7 wins.
Less than that really. Four wins gives you 5 packs, 190 gold and 190 dust. Packs apparently have an average dust value of a bit under 100, so you're getting the equivalent of about 9 packs or 900 gold. At 5 wins you get something like 1070 gold equivalent. It's risky enough that it's not particularly attractive for the average player, but you don't need to be much above average to be reasonably sure of a decent payout.

The main problem seems to be the high cost of entry combined with the random matchmaking of tavern brawl/arena. Arena is fair because even if you get a bad draw, you don't lose too much and can go back for another go. You might go up against some of the best people in the game, but at other times you might go up against the worst so it all averages out. But the high cost and short duration of this mode means that a single piece of bad luck will completely wipe out the majority of players. While the cost needs to be high to balance out the potential winnings, it's so high that most people simply won't be able to play at all. Which I'm pretty sure is the exact opposite of the reason tavern brawl was introduced in the first place.
 

Tiamattt

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Jul 15, 2011
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A little too rich for my blood. The chances of me making profit is...pretty low and I would consider myself lucky to break even in a sure to be very, very competitive format such as this one. In which case I'm much better off holding onto the gold for the upcoming winter set (which is going to be revealed at BlizzCon soon) or just doing 7 arena runs which at worse would get me 7 packs/dust/gold from going 0-21, it's actually pretty crazy that you need to win almost 7 wins here to get around the same rewards as bombing out 7 arena runs. In any case best of luck to anyone that partcipates in this, you're all much braver people than I am. :)
 

Jandau

Smug Platypus
Dec 19, 2008
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Kibeth41 said:
They ARE being fair... They're really not forcing you to spend your gold on anything. You can choose to spend it on 10 arena runs or a a standard 'tournament' run. You have free will. Really no justification to complain.

Some people really like Arena, some people would prefer to try and win 12 standard games, rather than 120 arena games.
Well, yes, they are being fair. That's what I said. I wasn't claiming they weren't fair. I was just saying they did a bare minimum to get into the "fair" range. And I'm mainly looking at it from a value proposition standpoint, not a fairness one. And from that angle, I feel this is a very shitty deal...

Kahani said:
Jandau said:
Assuming 1000 gold entry fee, you break even at around 6-7 wins.
Less than that really. Four wins gives you 5 packs, 190 gold and 190 dust. Packs apparently have an average dust value of a bit under 100, so you're getting the equivalent of about 9 packs or 900 gold. At 5 wins you get something like 1070 gold equivalent. It's risky enough that it's not particularly attractive for the average player, but you don't need to be much above average to be reasonably sure of a decent payout.

The main problem seems to be the high cost of entry combined with the random matchmaking of tavern brawl/arena. Arena is fair because even if you get a bad draw, you don't lose too much and can go back for another go. You might go up against some of the best people in the game, but at other times you might go up against the worst so it all averages out. But the high cost and short duration of this mode means that a single piece of bad luck will completely wipe out the majority of players. While the cost needs to be high to balance out the potential winnings, it's so high that most people simply won't be able to play at all. Which I'm pretty sure is the exact opposite of the reason tavern brawl was introduced in the first place.
First of all, I discounted dust in my examination since dust is only good in large quantities. A pack being worth 100 dust is a silly statement. A pack might, on average, provide you with cards that break down into 100 dust. But would you honestly pay 100 gold (the price of a pack) to get 100 dust. I'm guessing the answer is "Nope!". Dust is the consolation prize that you get for opening yet another pack of 4 commons + 1 uncommon, all of which you already have. Or when you open a really shitty "Legendary". Its value can't be measued quite so linearly, and it's nowhere near 1:1 exchange rate with gold.

But I do agree with you second paragraph entirely. It's literally the opposite of why they made Tavern Brawl. This should have been a separate mode...
 

LostCrusader

Lurker in the shadows
Feb 3, 2011
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I'd be willing to try it but 1000 gold is too much if its starting this week. Need more notice to be able to give it a try.

Kibeth41 said:
RedDeadFred said:
So even more mid-range Shaman than normal ladder. Pass.
Which was nerfed recently.
The mid-range shaman everyone is complaining about is from after the last balance patch, and it wasn't nerfed at all. The nerfs really just knocked out aggro shaman.

 

Lightspeaker

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Dec 31, 2011
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Economically this just isn't worth it.

The nature of the way Arena plays (max of 12 wins, three losses and you're out) means that the average number of wins in arena is just under three. Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/4e06r9/math_global_average_number_of_wins_per_arena_run/

In this simulation the number of 12 win runs is 107065 and the number of total runs is 16676607. Which equates to a 0.64% chance of a run being a 12-win run. Which roughly matches the percentages on the Hearthstone wiki:
http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Arena

To make matters worse: given the nature of this particular "arena" (constructed but with an arena win/loss format) that removes an element of the randomness that is arena drafting. That randomness helps to level the playing field in normal arena and make it more 'fair'. As per the above link, making the system less 'fair' means more 12 win runs for the best players, reducing the average number of wins for everyone else.


Based on this, which I haven't checked but I'll go with:
Assuming 1000 gold entry fee, you break even at around 6-7 wins.
Lets be generous and say six...the probability of breaking even is 14.45%. And that's assuming a completely fair setup. Given that this is NOT a fair setup then those percentages will be pushed lower. So somewhere south of 1 in 7 people will actually break even in this and less than 1 in 156 will actually hit the top prize. Its basically only worth the risk if you're consistently high ranked already.

Personally I've not played seriously and kept up with the meta for months (as a Priest player its been hardly worth the effort). Suffice to say I won't be bothering.