The Rise of the Mech Hearthstone Tavern Brawl highlights recent card buffs

I generally like Hearthstone’s Tavern Brawls. They’re a pleasant change from the norm and, sometimes, they’re a good way to finish quests without the bother of building your own decks. But sometimes they’re a bit of a headache, and I think Rise of the Mech falls into that category.

The point of the Brawl is as simple as can be: defeat your opponent. You’re given a random pre-made deck and off you go, hopefully to victory. The problem here is the decks themselves, which seems designed to highlight recently-changed cards. You have no idea what cards are in them, or even what class you’ll be playing, before you start. Hearthstone is a game of strategy, and in this Brawl, you’re going in blind. It’s hard to decide what to mulligan because you don’t know what you’re mulliganing for and it’s hard to decide how to play because you have no idea what card could be coming next.

On top of that, the decks themselves are kind of iffy. After playing a number of games and trying out each decks, I frequently found I have nothing in-hand to play for the first couple of turns, and my opponents often seemed to be facing a similar struggle.

However, I offer you the benefit of my experience (and many losses). While the deck you get can have a big impact on whether you win or lose, knowing what you’re getting gives you a leg up on your opponent. Here’s a rundown of each deck?

• Mage: This deck feels a bit basic: it’s all about dishing out spell damage, and there are very few minions for buffing your spell power. A few powerful cards will really help this deck shine: Luna’s Pocket Galaxy sets the cost of all of your minions to 1 mana, Kalecgos lets you cast your first spell each turn for free, and Malygos gives you +5 spell damage. Aim to get Luna’s quickly, so you can get these big minions on the board. This deck is mostly about buying time until you hit those powerful cards. Keep enemy minions in check with freeze effects from Frostbolt, Frost Nova, and Blizzard, then get your spell power cards down and hit your opponent with everything you’ve got.
• Paladin: This is a decent Mech Paladin deck, with lots of Mechs with Magnetic to combine them into a mega-mech and Kangor’s Endless Armo to resurrect them, complete with their Magnetic upgrades. Get your Mechs down, stick them together, and hope the RNG favors you with a copy of Kangor’s to play on turn 7.
• Priest: It’s all about the buffs with this deck. The problem is that there may be a few too many buffs in this deck, so you can wind up without any minions in your hand. Use Shadow: Word Death and other removal cards to keep your opponent from building a board while getting your own minions down to buff them to unstoppable levels. Zerek, Master Cloner is a key card: this 5/5 minion resummons itself after it’s killed if you’ve cast any spells on it.
• Rogue: This deck is based on getting as many Pogo-Hoppers as possible on the board, because each time you play one it gets +2/+2 for each other Pogo-Hopper you’ve played in the game. The idea is you play a Pogo-Hopper and then use cards to copy it or return it to your hand so you can get lots of them on the board. Save cards like Toggwaggle’s Scheme to pack your deck with Pogo-Hoppers.
• Warlock: This deck is confusing if you aren’t already familiar with it: the goal is to keep shuffling cards back into your deck so you can draw them again. Two cards make this worth it: Dollmaster Dorian and Fel Lord Betrug, both of which put minions (or copies of minions) on the board when you draw them. Ideally, you’ll get minions like this down as soon as possible, and then focus on drawing as many cards as you can. Each minion you draw immediately adds to your board, which can quickly become overwhelming. This is actually a pretty fun deck, but it’s also a bit slow and you seem to go down as soon as you start picking up speed.

If you hit the key combos on any of these decks, you’re likely to win. And if you don’t, you’re likely to lose. The randomness and lack of deck choice can make this one frustrating. My advice is to play this until you can win your free Classic card pack and then move on with your life.

And, of course, good luck!