How to win A Sunken Recipe Hearthstone Tavern Brawl, the first Brawl of the new expansion

Hi, it’s Gus Ferrari back again, and today we’re trading the Triple D Camaro in for a Goblin submersible to dive down into Nazjatar. I hear there’s this great little place called Mrgl’s Bar and Gill that’s serving up the freshest seafood on Azeroth. Start your meal off with some Unagi Skewer, and then try the Fragrant Kakavia. For desert, I hear their Mon’Dazi is the real deal!

And while you’re chowing down, try all ten deck recipes from the Hearthstone’s A Sunken Recipe Tavern Brawl!

This week’s Tavern Brawl is an introduction to the Voyage to the Sunken City expansion. In this Brawl, you’ll get to try out some of the expansion’s interesting deck recipes — and win a card pack in the process. Though oddly absent from Fractured in Alterac Valley, this type of Brawl has become a regular addition when we get a new expansion. We had An Outlandish Recipe for the Ashes of Outland expansion, Recipe of Tenacity for the Forged in the Barrens expansion, and A Recipe United for the United in Stormwind expansion.

If you were on the fence about what cards are worth crafting or how much of your hard earned gold to plunk down on packs, this Brawl will let you give expansion a trial run.

Tavern Brawl basics

• Name: A Sunken Recipe Tavern Brawl
• Description: Take a dive into the Sunken City! Choose a class and enjoy the latest deck recipes!
• Fun level: 5/10
• Difficulty: 9/10 to 4/10 depending on your class, deck, and opponent
• Replayability: 5/10
• Format: Standard
• Type: PVP
• Deck: Provided
• Rewards: 1 Standard card pack

For this Brawl, you choose your class and you’re assigned their deck recipe. These are premade decks, and the same decks you’ll find on the deck creation screen. The big difference in the Brawl is you get the deck with all the cards regardless of whether you own them or not. You’ll have every Legendary and Epic card you need for the deck.

Each class has a recipe meant to give players a good introduction to how the class will play in Voyage to the Sunken City. The timing of the release of A Sunken Recipe is ideal with the expansion releasing only a few days ago.

How to win A Sunken Recipe Tavern Brawl

Let’s look at each deck and a quick tip for playing it. You can only choose the class: the deck will be assigned. Each class received two new deck recipes with the expansion, but you’ll only see the Voyage to the Sunken City-themed decks in this Brawl. Ini Stormcoil isn’t just dominating Battlegrounds: you’ll see her in deck after deck in this Brawl.

To get started, pick the class you’re most comfortable with, and don’t be afraid to conceded if the game isn’t going your way. Warrior, Demon Hunter, and Mage looked strong in my playtime, but keep in mind that my sample size was rather small.

The deck recipes

Demon Hunter

• Abyssal Assault
  • Fish are friends, but you’re going to be food for these nasty Naga! And don’t think about sneaking by, because Xhilag of the Abyss can see everything with its Stalks.
  • This is an agreesive deck with only three cards that cost more than 4 mana. Hit your opponents so hard and so fast they’ll think they took the express train straight Davy Jones’ locker!

Druid

• Miraculous Growth
  • Some Naga have quite the green thumb! Hedra the Heretic will grow a board of monstrous creatures if you cast big spells throughout the game.
  • This deck is built about Hedra’s battlecry (“For each spell you’ve cast while holding this, summon a minion of that spell’s Cost”) and Gruff’s Hero card, but you only two copies of a single 7 mana spell and two copies of a single 6 mana spell as your “big spells.” Use them wisely!

Hunter

• Serpent’s Galore
  • The Naga have their bows at the ready to power up your spells! Twinbow Terrorcoil will cast your next spell twice, and then you can finish the game with the horrifying Hydraloon.
  • The Terrorcoils help you reduce the mana cost of your Naga Giant. Giving Hyrdaloon’s Heads Rush creates a nice swing turn. But you’ve got a ton of ways to reduce mana cost. It might help you cast a spell, but it won’t advance the Naga Giant’s cost reduction as much.

Mage

• Techtonic Titan
  • The beast of the deep are no match for Ini Stormcoil’s mechanical marvels! Swarm the board and use Gaia, the Techtonic to upgrade your fleet.
  • This deck has a strong Mech theme. Gaia is a good pseudo board clear and if you can get her to survive long enough to play Ini on her, you create a strong board presence.

Rogue

• Ahoy Cap’n!
  • Captain Hooktusk is back and she’s an Admiral now! Gather your pirate crew and steal your opponent’s stuff before making them walk the plank!
  • If Mage is all about the bots, then it’s a pirate’s life for Rogue. This is a nice midrange deck with early pressure from pirates and a big later game power play from Hooktusk. Scabbs works as a pseduo Vanish, but also gives you board presence after the Vanish.

Paladin

• Popping Bubbles
  • Ini Stormcoil is an engineering genius! Use technology like The Leviathan to sift through the seafloor and see what you can dig up.
  • This is another Mech themed deck that makes heavy use of the new Dredge keyword. It also has a handbuff theme which hasn’t always been a super successful strategy, but has seen a bit of a resurgence.

Priest

• How Illuminating
  • Put on your finest Serpent Wig and you’ll be shining bright. Take advantage of the Naga’s spellcasting abilities to overwhelm your opponent.
  • This deck felt like it wanted to be a combo style deck with lots of card draw and Bless to give you that old Divine Spirit Inner Fire finisher combo.

Shaman

• Ooh Shiny
  • They say that the most vibrant creatures are also the most deadly. Don’t get too close to these Bioluminescent denizens of the deep, or you may get shocked by their spell damage.
  • The idea behind this deck is to build a board, buff it with Bioluminescence and then rain terror down on your opponent with massive spell damage. Good plan, if you live long enough to make it work.

Warlock

• Za’qul’s Curse
  • Drag your opponent to their watery grave by afflicting them with Abyssal Curses! If your health gets a bit low in the process, Za’qul will turn your opponent’s pain into your gain.
  • I was surprised how few Voyage to the Sunken City cards this deck used. Even without opening my packs, I only lacked 8 cards to make this deck. If you’re a F2P player, this might be a good deck to start with on the Ladder. Za’qul basically gives your Abyssal Curses Lifesteal while he’s on the board. Tamsin is helpful to copy some of your curse generators.

Warrior

• Woah Nellie!
  • Colossal creatures lurk in the depths of your deck! Control the board and finish the game with monstrous minions like Trenchstalker and Nellie, the Great Thresher.
  • This felt like an old school Control Warrior deck where you try to answer all your opponent’s moves while building up a huge pile of armor. If anything would tempt me back to the Standard Ladder, it would be a deck like this being strong in the meta. I’m intrigued.

My Hearthstone soapbox: Why can’t we play these decks all the time?

If you’ll allow me a moment to jump on my soapbox. As a free to play player, this Brawl is great. It gives me a taste of what these decks play like. The problem is once the Brawl is over, I can’t play them anymore because I don’t have the cards. Even spending 5,000g on packs doesn’t guarantee I’ll be open enough high cost cards to build the deck I want or give me enough dust to craft the cards I need. I think Blizzard should perhaps look at the number of Epics and Legendary cards they award from packs. More players might take a greater interest in the Ladder if Hearthstone lowered the barrier to entry.

But for now, we can all enjoy the Brawl.