Discover where your fortune lies in Hearthstone’s Visions of Sayge Tavern Brawl

Come one, come all to the Darkmoon Faire. Sayge will peer into the future and tell you his vision. Fame, fortune, misery? No, probably just a card pack if you can win Hearthstone’s Visions of Sayge Tavern Brawl.

Not much is known about Sayge, the mysterious gnoll in the employ of the Darkmoon Faire with the ability to see into your future. In World of Warcraft, this NPC will ask you a series of questions. If you get them right, he will grant you a variety of different buffs. Strength, Stamina, Versatility, it’s all there. He even has a buff to all your resistances which is a vestigial buff from his Classic origins when resistances were far more important.

Tavern Brawl basics

• Name: Visions of Sayge
• Description: Help Yogg-Saron find a servant! Your deck is full of wannabes who cast a random spell at a random target when played.
• Fun level: 6/10
• Difficulty: 7/10
• Replayability: 4/10
• Format: Standard
• Type: PvP
• Deck: Provided
• Rewards: 1 Standard pack. This pack can contain any card from any set in the current Standard rotation.

Your only choice this week is to pick a class. Your deck will be provided for you. I don’t think the decks are random. They appeared to have some degree of synergy between the cards in the deck and I see the same cards over and over again. For example, my Paladin deck had all the various Libram cards and the Libram support cards.

On your turn, you’ll be offered a Discover-like choice between two “powerful” cards. Powerful here means Legendary or Epic. Even within the Standard pool, there’s a large range of power levels in the Epic and Legendary cards. Some are meant as deck enablers and are just a pile of stats without the other supporting cards which you may or may not have. Class restrictions didn’t matter. You can be offered powerful cards from any class regardless of the class you’re playing.

You get the one you pick and the other goes into your opponent’s hand. Once you make your choice, the game plays out like a normal Hearthstone match. Your goal is to take the opposing Hero down to zero health before they can take you down to zero health. Should you be successful, Sayge will give you his blessing, and by blessing I mean a Standard card pack.

How to win Visions of Sayge Tavern Brawl

With the rules of Brawl, you’re adding three cards to your hand per turn: your normal draw, your pick from Sayge and your opponent’s pick from Sayge. Your hand is going to fill up quickly. Your goal should be to end each turn with no more than 7 cards in hand. Good luck with that!

During the early turns, try to give your opponent high mana cost cards to clog up their hand. Eventually, it will fill and they’ll have to burn the cards from his deck. This will leave them with a hand of awkward cards and no clear strategy. Embiggen, despite its zero mana cost is a great card to give your opponent because it will make every other card in their deck more expensive and thus harder to use. Mortuary Machine is another good pick to give your opponent as it will make your board more sticky if they play it.

Mulligan for the lowest cost cards you have. Don’t be afraid to play a card that won’t activate just to get it out of your hand. You want to be sure you have room for the cards you draw which should have some synergy and a clear win condition.

You want to avoid classes with strong card draw mechanics like Demon Hunter. Drawing cards is the last thing you want to do in this Brawl. I found Hunter and Death Knight to be a strong picks for classes, and Warrior has a pirate-themed deck that can work as well. Warlock also has some decks with lower cost cards — just be sure you never use your Hero Power.

A new take on a Brawl

Usually, we either get a constructed Brawl, or one with a mostly random deck. I appreciate the time the team took to create the decks for this Brawl. They aren’t perfect, but they take some of the randomness out of it. I think if this Brawl returns in the future, it might be good to discount the cards from Sayge 1 or 2 mana, and start each Hero with 3 mana.

Best of luck to you as you play your games and go for your Standard pack. As Sayge himself says, “Are you ready to discover where your fortune lies, adventurer?”

This post originally appeared on January 7, 2021; updated July 5, 2023