#tavernbrawls

Brawl: Rise of the Zombeasts

First Ran: June 13th, 2018

Rules: Pre-constructed Deck. Both players are Deathstalker Rexxar with a deck full of randomly generated Zombeasts. Their hero powers are also free.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRnz3MisiM

Background: After we launched Knights of the Frozen Throne a lot of players gravitated towards Deathstalker Rexxar and the possibilities his “Build-a-beast” power created. There were more than a few requests for this to be more of an all-encompassing brawl. I tinkered with a few different versions of the brawl. One where a Build-a-beast triggered at the start of each turn, found that to be too slow. In that version I also had a deck of 30 Snowflipper Penguins, mostly because it was funny and I wanted players to focus more on the Zombeasts than anything in their deck. That realization led me to creating the deck from Zombeasts and going forward with that.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the heavily strategic nature of the brawl

+ Players noticed how this was some version of a brawl they had been requesting for some time

+ Was a fun way to highlight a specific mechanic

Lessons Learned:

- Games still could go very long and very slow, a couple poisonous and lifesteal minions and you end up where you started. 

Brawl: Gone Fishin’

First Ran: May 30th, 2018

Rules: Constructed Deck (20 minions). Both players get Tad’s Pole which at the end of each turn summons a minion from your opponents deck. 

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ9olU4h5SY

Background: I get a lot of Tavern Brawl pitches and a lot are scoped way too large, too many custom cards, too many mechanics etc. The initial pitch for this came from a guy on our QA team, give both players the pole. It was simple and easy to implement so I gave it a shot. One thing we found through playtesting is that it’s very easy to make a garbage deck full of spells and invalidate the rules of the brawl, so I instituted the 20 minions deck-building rule. We also found that with certain scenarios you would end up with games that wouldn’t end, so I dropped the health max to 20.

Successes:

+ Players found the challenge of building a deck that could be used against them interesting.

+ Players responded well to the 20 health. Wasn’t overly disruptive.

+ The Class/Chosen tweak mechanic came in handy in a future brawl “Henchmania.”

Lessons Learned:

- It didn’t come out but anytime you’re dealing with building a deck for your opponent there are a lot of strategies that give them nothing to do (like all healing spells)

Brawl: Portals to Another Dimension

First Ran: March 22nd 2018

Rules: Choose a Class. At the start of the game choose one of three portals: Tech Portal, Swarm Portal, Mind Portal. 20 copies of the portal will be shuffled into your deck. Each card will add a random themed card to your hand, it costs (3) less.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ijtsbxC7s

Background: This brawl was a part of the StarCraft 20th anniversary celebration. We wanted to make a brawl that was lightly themed to StarCraft without making a ton of highly specific cards (also with very little new art). I wanted to lean into the concept of the StarCraft Trinity, the balance between Terran/Zerg/Protoss and apply that to Hearthstone. So I created sets of cards that felt like they represented the StarCraft factions, about 80 each, and then these portals work like normal unstable portal. My dream was that players would compare the Class/Faction combos to see which is the strongest.

Successes:

+ I learned a lot about the systems involved in creating subsets during this.

+ Was nice to be included in the broader anniversary package.

+ The Class/Chosen tweak mechanic came in handy in a future brawl “Henchmania.”

Lessons Learned:

- The fantasy was a bit too oblique, we tried to not scream StarCraft but players basically couldn’t even hear it. It was missing the real StarCraft flavor.

Brawl: Wacky Waxy Winter’s Veil

First Ran: December 20th, 2017

Rules: Constructed deck. At the start of the game Greatfather Kobold delivers 3 Large Waxy Gifts to your board, they have “Deathrattle: Add a Legendary minion to your opponent’s hand. It costs (3) Less”. Break open the gifts to get cheap legendaries!

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTYeF-YZrEw

Background: This came during our Winter’s Veil event during the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion. I wanted to do something holiday-inspired and Kobold-inspired. For a while I had it in my head as “A Very Kobold Christmas”. So my thought was what would the Gift Exchange brawl from the previous year look like with a Nightmare Before Christmas-like Kobold interpretation. Hence the Wax-covered gifts.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the twist on the older brawl. The cheaper legendary minions led to some interesting strategies.

+ We recorded a Kobold going “HO HO HO HAPPY WINTER’S VEIL!” it accompanied a shadow of a sleigh flying over. Was able to create this character of “Greatfather Kobold” with some simple reuse.

Lessons Learned:

- Constructed brawls around the holidays always feels a little weird. It’s asking a lot from a player when they’re looking for something fun and easy.

Brawl: The Void Singularity

First Ran: November 29th, 2017

Rules: Constructed Deck. At the end of each turn destroy all friendly minions and create a “Singularity” minion with their combined stats.

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1rfbx9tFEY

Background: This was actually the brawl I pitched to get the job I have now. I didn’t just pitch it, I made it using the Hearthstone development tool, playtested it, and iterated on it. I had made my first brawl before I was hired. Once I joined the team I set out on making it real.

Successes:

+ Players enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the best strategy for the mechanic.

+ Was a pretty simple idea that was easy to implement.

+ Was easy to re-run, as new cards would change the experience.

Lessons Learned:

- Learned a lot about the programming loop for Hearthstone, there were issues with Deathrattle cards I smoothed out in future launchs.

Brawl: Battle for the Crater

First Ran: August 2nd, 2017

Rules: Random Deck and Random Class. One player gets a deck made mostly of Dinosaurs the other player gets a deck made mostly of Elementals.

Background: I wanted to have a brawl that would cap off the Journey to Un’Goro cycle. Something that would have the flavor of the expansion to send it off. I decided the best way was to take it’s major themes and create a new random brawl around it, Dinosaurs vs. Elementals!

Successes:

+ Our first time giving a random class on start up. 

+ Flavor was fun and a good way to end the expansion.

Lessons Learned:

- Dinosaur is not a particularly well-defined tribe like Elemental was. I had to make a set of cards that included beasts from Un’Goro and all the dinosaurs from previous expansions. 

- Related to the first point most of those dinosaurs don’t have strong synergies compared to the elementals who all play off of each other. As such generally Dinosaur would be weaker.

Brawl: Ragnaros’ Fire Festival

First Ran: July 5th, 2017

Rules: Constructed deck. A “Mini-Rag” minion gets added to your board. At the end of each turn Mini-Rag deals damage equal to its attack randomly, if it kills a minion it’s attack increases by 1. Grow Mini-Rag to earn rewards!

Player Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIQ8nrG3Dnw

Background: This was a marquee brawl as a part of the very first Fire Festival. We had the ability to unlock increasing visual emotes, little fireworks behind the “wow” emote, and needed a system to deliver them. Working closely with Pat Nagle I came up with this idea that’s sort of a blend of Co-Op and competitive. You could simply win or you could grow your Mini-Rag together. If you used Mini-Rag to kill 50 minions you would unlock better fireworks.

Successes:

+ Was an interesting blend of strategies.

+ Mini-Rag having the pitched up “Die, Insect” was fun and players enjoyed the little wink.

+ Worked well as a method for distributing the fireworks.

+ Fun for players who wanted to challenge themselves to build a giant Mini-Rag.

Lessons Learned:

- The blend of strategies could be confusing for some players. Some would just try to win outright and that removes some of the fun.

- We had to run this brawl mostly unchanged for Fire Festival year 2 because of how the fireworks system was hooked up.

Tavern Brawl Post-Mortem

Brawl: Just A Hallucination

First Ran: June 7th, 2017

Rules: Replace your deck with the card Hallucination. Hallucination discovers a card from your opponents class.

Background: On my very first day as a designer I was tinkering with the tools and casually implemented this brawl. It was pretty simple but was a valuable first step in my career.

Successes: 

+ Players responded reasonably well. 

+ Brawls where they don’t have to build a deck are always popular and this was a good brawl to complete quests with.

+ The Discover mechanic led to a lot of good player decisions 

Lessons Learned:

- The constant discovers can sometimes make this brawl go slowly, especially when matched randomly.

- It’s harder to re-run this brawl as fewer players are familiar with this card.