#198 - The Angry Chicken: “Unicorn Funeral”

2-21-17

• Garrett • Jocelyn • Dills

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Intro:  Welcome to The Angry Chicken!

Thanks to everyone for continuing to support us on Patreon. Go to Patreon.com/TAC.

Shout out to our Orlando HCT player Vanqswisher and our Tavern Heroes that all fought hard during the prelims this past weekend. Dirty Rat is now public enemy no.1 as far as I’m concerned. So gross.

News

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Year of the Mammoth Incoming

• Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers going to Wild.

Hall of Fame

Classic set cards that are seeing too much play, homogenizing the game, and will be added to the Hall of Fame set which will be Wild ONLY.

• Azure Drake
• Sylvanas Windrunner
• Ragnaros the Firelord
• Power Overwhelming
• Ice Lance
• Conceal

Don’t Disenchant Hall of Fame cards

• We will be receiving the full dust value up to the maximum number of the Hall of Fame cards that we can put in a deck. We get the dust and the cards!
• Meaning if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you'll get 3200 dust!

Bye bye Adventures (not really), hello more cards!

• There will not be an Adventure with a small amount of cards in the middle of the year.
• The middle of the year release will also be a 130 card expansion meaning we’re getting three full-sized (130 card) expansions in 2017.
• The storytelling missions of Adventures are coming as free additional single-player content with the second expansion of this year. (So no Un’goro missions)

Wild

• A Wild format Heroic Tavern Brawl is coming after the release of the next expansion.
• Blizz will collaborate with tournament organizers to promote Wild tournaments.

Misc

• Daily login rewards are coming to usher in the next expansion: offering dust, gold, and expansion packs
• Maiev Shadowsong is coming as a new Rogue Hero: Win 10 games of HS in Standard Ranked or Casual.

Links

• http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475356/a-year-of-mammoth-proportions-2-16-2017

Live Dev Insights

With Ben Brode (Game Director) and Mike Donais (Principal Game Designer)

Hall of Fame

• The six Classic cards will be added to the Hall of Fame when the new expansion/Standard rotation occurs.
• The Hall of Fame cards will be removed from the Classic Card Packs. Will have to craft them.
• Used many metrics to decide which cards to put in the Hall of Fame

• Big one was that these cards were played in a lot of decks.
• These cards also had fewer options at their Mana costs.

• New Classic cards to replace the Cards the set is losing? Brode said that they could, but they’re not sure.

• If they did the cards would have to fill specific roles
• Important to think about the problems they’re having with Classic right now. Power is an issue. Gave Shatter as an example of a card they might add to Classic because it’s simple to understand, feels like Classic Mage, not extremely powerful.

• Hall of Fame versus Nerfs. No concrete rules but Brode said that if a card would be a problem in Wild then it’s probably a nerf candidate versus a card that doesn’t need a nerf but has high inclusion will probably fall in Hall of Fame territory.
• They’re very open to moving more cards to the Hall of Fame. More emphasis on how they don’t want too many Basic/Classic cards in Standard decks.
• Auctioneer was on the board for Hall of Fame. They’re not putting it in there just yet because it separates the great players from the average players. Many decisions are made around the Auctioneer.

• They think that Conceal going to Wild will make dealing with Auctioneer easier in Standard.

No more Adventures/3 Expacs a year

• The single-player experiences will dish out expansion card packs.
• No Heroics planned this year. The want to make the new missions more difficult. Not ruling out Heroics coming back in the future.

• Adventure missions had to be easy because there were exclusive cards behind the missions. That is not the case since they’re rewarding card packs. Up goes the difficulty.

Misc.

• They’re working on bringing old content back for purchase. Possibly for a limited time.
• Wild Season rankings could come in the near future
• They’re not done with Ranked improvements

• Rank 12 doesn’t feel like the accomplishment that it is.
• High ranked players have to grindy of an experience.

• Possible to see a PTR to test changes to live cards but not to test unreleased expansion sets.
• Powerful healing on Neutral Cards is probably going away.
• Arena blog coming out later this week.

Team 5 Talks

Iksar on Team Size

After mentioning that there are only “3-4 of us” on the Hearthstone balance team, Iksar specific that: “Yes. Design team is around 15 people now. Live Content (Brawls, Firesides, Other Events), Initial Design (Card Designs, Mechanic Designs, Set Flavor and Theme), System Design (Ranked Systems, Tons of Other Systems), Final Design (Set Tuning, Card Design, Mechanic Design), and Mission Design (Mission Design, Card Design). We also have Ben that directs the ship and another sort of jack of all trades designer than works a lot on new player experience, matchmaking, and flavor things. That said, we all help each other out quite a bit and the real list of things each individual person does is more like 20 bullet points rather than 2. That's the general gist though.” He also added on the Ui team after.

Max McCall returns to talk about Combo Decks

• Combo decks are interesting as they're fundamentally different from typical Hearthstone decks.
• This adds some variety to the Hearthstone ladder which is good.
• But when they're too popular, it's usually an issue since they're less interactive.
• McCall says, "I am not saying some or all combo decks are inherently bad for Hearthstone."
• It doesn't matter whether or not a deck is easy or hard to play because it's not interactive regardless.
• You can't really say a combo deck is interactive because it has removal.
• You also can't say, "Well they should have had a Taunt minion," because most combo decks are "very prepared to deal with that."
• McCall says it's good when these decks pop up, but if they're too popular and powerful they end up being frustrating and nerfed as a result.
• Otherwise, the team will let them be like the current Aviana, Kun the Forgotten King, and C'Thun combo.

Druid of the Claw is finally getting new card text

Brode: “We have adjusted Druid of the Claw's wording in an upcoming patch.”-

Strategy

Patreon Thanks

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Thanks to the patrons we do one extra episode a month where patrons can call in and ask questions live on the show. The next  Patron Call-In episode will be at the end of this month.

• Matthew Hildebrandt
• Ian Lowther
• LalleGbG        
• Ben Cooper
• Zhihong        Chua
• LadyChaos        
• Craig Langford
• Timothy        Owen

Dragon Priest

http://i.imgur.com/uU9dirY.png

Emails

You can send your emails to TACpodcast@gmail.com.

Lance

Hello everyone,

I listen to your show every week, but this is my first email to a podcast. I'm concerned with the new format for Hearthstone. I think they're going to lose a lot of casual players with the new 3 expansions of 130 cards each year. I liked the small set of cards they put in the adventure because at least I got all the cards. Over time I could still work on getting the bigger expansions completed. Now, to get every card it’s going to cost 600 bucks a year, which is a bit much for casual players.

Will that's my rant for today. I would very much like to know what you guys have to say about my thoughts.

Thanks.

Outro

Patreon Thanks

TAC is supported by our epic Patrons. You can become a TAC Patron by going to Patreon.com/tac. Becoming a TAC patron gives you access to the TAC Skype account for the Patron Call-in episodes as well as the aftershow video.

iTunes Thanks

• Name

The Angry Chicken can be found on Amove.tv and Youtube.com/Amovetv. Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H. and Peter Williams. TAC coffee mugs and glasses are over at bit.ly/amovestore and our tshirt is for sale at SlashLoot.com.

Follow the show on Twitter @TACpodcast, Facebook.com/Amovetv, and TACpodcast.reddit.com.

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Personal Stuff

Dill’s where else can everyone find you?

Follow Dills @WillieDills

Check out my stream at twitch.tv/williedillssf

The Instance - The World of Warcraft podcast so you don’t have to

Stormcast - We record Sundays at 8pm PST

Joce where can you be found?

Follow Jocelyn @JocePlays

The Gamers’ Inn

Follow Garrett @GarrettArt

Heroes Charity Brawl this Saturday! HeroesCharityBrawl.com

NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.

Into the Nexus: The Heroes of the Storm Podcast!

The Angry Nerd: Amove.tv/angrynerd

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