How to win new A Festival of Legends Recipe Hearthstone Tavern Brawl

Hi, it’s Gus Ferrari back once again, and we’re rolling out with a special guest for Hearthstone’s A Festival of Legends Recipe Tavern Brawl. The gnomes over in Gadgetzan souped the C.A.M.A.R.O., and it’s a good thing because on this trip, we’re joined by an old friend. He’s thrilled crowds from Northrend to Pandaria and from Silvermoon to Caverns of Time. That’s right, give a big triple-D welcome to Elite Tauren Chieftain!

ETC is taking us to his favorite place in his home town of Thunder Bluff. We’ll be stopping in to visit Aska Mistrunner. I hear she makes some of the best Spiced Wolf Meat and Mulgore Spice Bread you’ve ever eaten. Just don’t ask her for the recipe for the Mulgore Spice Bread. It’s an old family secret and if she ever tried to give it away, her ancestors would march right down from Red Rocks to stop her.

This week’s Tavern Brawl is an introduction to Festival of Legends where we get to try out some of the expansion’s most interesting cards and 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, A Recipe United for the United in Stormwind expansion, A Sunken Recipe for the Voyage to the Sunken City expansion, A Mysterious Recipe for the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion, and A Lich King Recipe for March of the Lich King.

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 Festival of Legends Recipe Tavern Brawl
Description: A Festival of Legends takes place! 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 (this can include any card from any set in the current Standard rotation)

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, but there are two big differences for the Brawl. One, 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. Two, the decks are Standard but the Brawl format is Wild. You can discover anything, not just the options you’ll see when you use these decks on the ladder.

Each class has a recipe meant to give players a good introduction to how the class will play in Festival of Legends. These recipe type Brawls appear close to release of the expansion, though some appear closer than others. The Brawl is generally more fun when we get it closer to the release like this one.

How to win A Festival of Legends 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 a new recipe with the expansion. While you might still see a Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria, or March of the Lich King recipe on the collection screen when you make a new deck, only the Festival of Legends-themed decks are available in this Brawl. To get started, pick the class you’re most comfortable with, and don’t be afraid to concede the match if the game isn’t going your way.

A Festival of Legends decks and how to use them

Death Knight

• Climatic Necrotic Explosions
• Consume corpses. Deal damage. Gain health. Summon souls to do your bidding. What else does a Death Knight need?
• They laid out the game plan fairly well in the description. This is a Blood/Frost/Unholy deck that tries to do a little bit of everything.

Demon Hunter

• Crush with Rush
• Halveria Darkraven has gathered a rowdy crew of Rush minions — use them to overwhelm your opponents.
• This deck has all the strengths of Demon Hunters with strong draw and an aggressive game plan. It has a plethora of Rush minions, plus ways to generate even more. All those Rush minions make it difficult for your opponent to maintain any board presence leaving you free to smash their face.

Druid

• Smooth Groove
• Peace, love, and punching your opponent in the face with a massive hero power.
• This deck is all about buffing up your hero’s attack power. You can use this, along with Armor, to clear enemy minions, but we all know face is place to unleash your unlimited power.

Hunter

• Mister Mukla’s Beastly Band
• Mister Mukla’s getting the band together! Help him out by summoning big beast and slinging around bananas.
• I hope he’s as successful as Phineas and Ferb were when they got Love Handle back together. Love Handle, in my article. Oh yeah, I know people. This deck is pretty straightforward. Fill your board with beasts and buff them up with bananas. In the games I’ve played so far, it seems like several classes maintain decent hand sizes so Mister Mukla’s Battlecry doesn’t hurt you too much, and it generally causes them to burn at least one card.

Mage

• Light ‘Em Up!
• Crank up the volumn in this spell-focused deck by playing as many Lightshows as you can.
• You have several ways of copying Lightshow, plus a bevy of other tools. Infinitize the Maxitude is a flexible spell, and Solid Alibi helps against the more aggressive decks. I don’t how strong it will be when the meta settles, but for this Brawl, this deck has been one of the more entertaining ones to play.

Paladin

• Divine Disco
• Attention on the dance floor! This Paladin deck is here to boogie down by casting a spotlight on Divine Shield minions.
• As you might have guessed from the description, this is a Divine Shield deck. Levithan makes a return, and Starlight Groove is a lesser version of Ice Block.

Priest

• Harmonic Healing
• Turn healing into power using Overheal minions! With plenty of healing and buff spells, your board will be hard to take down.
• Narrator voice: it actually wasn’t. I don’t know if I had a lousy draw, or I just don’t understand the mechanic, but I haven’t had much success with this deck.

Rogue

• Bounce Around
• Use and reuse your combo cards with Shadowstep and Breakdance to show your opponents how sick your mixtape is.
• This deck is clearly inspired by the House of Pain earworm (click it, you know you want to). It’s an appropriate homage, too, but house of pain is also a good description of what your opponent will be feeling as use and reuse your cards.

Shaman

• Overloaded Orchestra
• Setup for a huge Overload turn with Inzah and Jazz Bass. With tons of spells and the help of the Firelord, you’ll have plenty of damage to close out the game.
• Inzha reduces the cost of our Overload cards and Jazz Bass reduces the cost of your spells. Both serve to mitigate the downside of your Overload cards. As we have seen over and over in Hearthstone, cost reductions can be very powerful.

Warlock

• Symphony of Sins
• Orchestrate your opponent’s demise with help of Rin and an army of Imps.
• This deck is highlighting the Legendary spell, Symphony of Sins. It also includes a new version of Rin after the original iteration proved to be a little slow for modern Hearthstone. While you wait to draw Symphony, you have a bevy of Imp generators to contest the board.

Warrior

• Melodic Menagerie
• Rock out with minions of all different types to empower The One-Amalgam Band!
• This deck relies on minions to contest the board. You’ve got Pirates, Undead, Dragons, Mechs, Beasts, Quillboar, and even a couple of Amalgams. It all builds to create a One-Amalgam Band that should prove very difficult for your opponent to deal with. With the caveat that I’m a Warrior/Priest main, I found this deck a lot of fun to play.

As a casual, free to play player, this Brawl is great. It gives me a taste of what these decks play like and lets me target those cards I need to craft. These decks will continue to get refined as players get more experience with them, and other decks may arise that aren’t part of these recipes. I’ve been burned too many times to go spending big on dust to craft cards. So for now, enjoy the Brawl and let the meta work itself out.