Coin Concede - Episode 227 ""

Hat * Botticus * Appa* Guest*

Intro (~10 min)

Welcome to Episode 227 of Coin Concede, a Hearthstone podcast dedicated to making the competitive side of the game more accessible to you.

It is Thursday 02/13 in the evening

Joining us from Gadgetzan, New York, it’s RidiculousHat!

Also joining us - from Karazhan, California it’s Botticus!

Joining you all from the Maelstrom, Louisiana, it’s Appa!

Joining from Northrend, Massachusetts, it’s WickedGood!

Coin Concede is supported in large part by you, the listener. If you’d like to find out how you can support us and receive rewards in return, head to patreon.com/coinconcede

Huge thanks to Prakash!

You can also support us by leaving an iTunes review!

Brief Steve introduction - we're going to talk a lot about Off Curve in Tournaments so no need to overdo it here

Hi Steve!

For the maybe one person that doesn't know who you are but also listens to this show, tell us about your involvement in the HS community

http://offcurve.com/masterstour

Why Priest?

Anduin, Tyrande, or Lazul?

How has it been getting involved in both the official and grassroots HS tournament scene more over the past year or so, both as a caster, developer, and player? @Botticus

What are you playing on Switch right now?

How's life and ladder? -

Hat -

Appa -  

Botticus -

WickedGood -

News Highlights -  (~30 min)

• Iksar on Meta shifts (Twitter)

• We don’t have any plans for changes on the immediate horizon, but we plan to circle back in a few weeks to see if there are any changes we want to make as a result of Galakrond’s Awakening cards or changes that might be necessary looking forward into the next expansion.
• For Battlegrounds, we have a change for Floating Watcher that is planned to go out tomorrow and a larger scale update planned in the near future.
• For Wild, we’re looking at some of the nerfs we made to cards that rotate into Wild with the next expansion and seeing if we want to revert any of them. Will have more updates on that soon ™. Good luck and have fun!

• Raiding Party
• Dr. Boom, Mad Genius
• Luna's Pocket Galaxy
• Extra Arms
• Giggling Inventor
• Reckless Experimenter (technically)

• Patch 16.2.4 live now! (BlizzardForums)
• Interview with Alex Charskey (Blizzpro)

• "There’s a lot of discussion when we structure these tournaments and events, and we value the community’s feedback, and that is one of the pieces of feedback that we hear the most, that there are fewer opportunities for Global Finals for the players, but my challenge to those players is that if you think you are global champion material, then the first step is to do really well in Masters Tours consistently. "
• "I think that one of my goals as one of the people that’s designing the Hearthstone esports system is ensuring the strong longevity of the esport itself. It is certainly interesting for me to see other organizations and other esports inject huge amounts of prizes into their systems and, occasionally, I question whether or not that sort of strategy is sustainable. And one of the things we want to do is make sure we manage expectations while we continue to build momentum in a more organic fashion as we keep going with these events. I think doubling from 1.5 million to 3 million, across six events, is very reasonable."

• Interview with Drew Higbee (Blizzpro)

Tournament Results -

OFF CURVE

• So there haven't been major tournaments going on lately, but we wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the architect behind the public dashboard maintained by WickedGood on offcurve.com/masterstour
• Tell us a little bit about how this dashboard came to be.
• What did you learn while developing it in this specific application and in general?
• What has it taught you about HS that you didn't realize before?
• How has the response and reaction been?
• What do you think is the best way for someone to get an immediate benefit out of the tool by only looking at one or two tabs? What about if they have a little more time and experience and want to dig deeper?
• How much time does it take you on a weekly basis to maintain?
• Why do people keep playing face hunter in tournaments? (Warning - it was actually good this past week during week 3 in one lineup)

Jonkoping

• You should probably play Galakrond Rogue
• Big mix at the top - Highlander Mage overperforming, Embiggen Druid is alright, Galakrond Warrior doing well
• Galakrond Rogue, Embiggen Druid, Galakrond Warrior was the best lineup for wins, while Quest Hunter, Highlander Mage, Galakrond Rogue was best by winrate - much smaller sample size
• One person won with Face Hunter but you probs shouldn't play it
• As far as decks go, Quest Hunter is the nuts so far and Quest Druid is also overperforming.

The ladder

• Week 4 of Galakrond's Awakening! Cards that mattered: Manasaber, Felwing, Shotbot. Maybe Reno
• Hunter is great and has a lot of good options - HL, Quest, and Dragon are all strong
• Embiggen Druid is dropping while Quest is rising with the winds. Both also solid.
• Galakrond Rogue is still good, and Questionable Rogue is really questionable.
• Mech Paladin is a surprisingly decent meta pick and Shotbot is unsurprisingly a good card.
• Wing 4 still unfolding. We'll see what happens!

Ongoing

• NPH 3v3
• Aspirant
• THL
• MonkeyBubble

Coming Soon

• Pax East two weekends from now - we haven’t heard anything about tournaments there
• DH Anaheim next weekend

Decksplanations - Galakrond's Awakening Retrospective

Bott

Card you overrated: Twisted Knowledge

Card you underrated: Winged Guardian

Positive thing: Kept Things Interesting

Constructive/disappointing thing: Adventure wasn’t fun

Hat

Card you overrated: Boompistol Bully

Card you underrated: Animated Avalanche

Positive thing: Pacing of mini-metas and self-correcting aspects

Constructive/disappointing thing: Adventure structure

Wicked

Card you overrated: Sky Gen’ral Kragg

Card you underrated: Rising Winds

Positive thing: Shifting the meta without giving us a broken deck (yet)

Constructive/disappointing thing: Trying to keep up with the constantly changing meta

Cards that I think fit these categories based on my opinions if you want to use them:

Over: Fist of Ra-Den, Bully, Maybe Erkh or Gazer, Cleric of Scales, Kragg, Reno?, Licensed Adv

Under: Air Raid, Rising Winds, Skipper, Manasaber, Guardian, Fresh Scent, Skyvateer, Scalelord

Cards that were exactly as good as we thought: Felwing

Things I thought of that could be considered good or bad

Good things: Meta freshness, pacing of card releases/changes, pacing of mini-metas, appropriate power level, sneaky variety of options over time, experimentation with different set release formats, dev communication, Togwaggle's voice lines, the puppet show

Bad things: Cost, pacing of card releases/changes, pacing of mini-metas, Embiggen druid, initial polarization of the meta towards a small number of classes, timing with esports events, late card reveals, adventure structure, adventure difficulty

Outro (~5min)

Thanks and contact!

We have many folks we'd like to thank - check out our THANKS! section on the website at www.coinconcede.com, where you can also find our contact info, our show notes, and our Patreon information!

-You can monetarily support our show at www.patreon.com/CoinConcede

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And write in to our email at coinconcede@gmail.com

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BIG THANKS to our producers VIRIATUS, nmbrthry, ItinerantWizard, and DogeTK!!!

Coin Concedes (Shout Outs):

Hat - Appa, Pasca, Benjamin_Roller, StormRaige, Mojopowell, FrenchToast, Firebat, Decktech+Eldorian, Donde and Saku
There once was a player named Hat,

who knew face was always where it's at.

However, he had,

at tourneys forbad

Face Hunter, saying "don't pick that".

Botticus -

Appa -

WickedGood -

Keep Calm and

And if you see us on ladder…

“Coin Concede” Hat

“Coin Concede” Bott

“Coin Concede” Appa

“Coin Concede" WickedGood