How to win the World Championship Hearthstone Tavern Brawl

This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl celebrates its past World Champions. We have one deck from each champion so far, starting with Firebat in 2014, and you’ll get to pretend you’re on the big stage, playing the grand finals!

I mean, if you want to. If you don’t, you can just pretend you’re in the comfort of your home, away from the lights and the audience eyes and the nerve-wracking pressure. That’s probably the safest option. Either way, here’s this week’s Brawl!

Tavern Brawl basics

Name: World Championship Tavern Brawl
Description: Travel through a history of Hearthstone’s world champions! Select an iconic deck and see which champion reigns supreme!
Fun level: 8/10
Difficulty: 8/10
Replayability: 6/10
Format: Standard
Type: PVP
Deck: Provided
Rewards: 1 Across the Timeways card pack

You’ll see that you have several decks to pick from, each named after a past Hearthstone World Champion. The fun and replayability are in trying them out and remembering those past archetypes that you might have piloted yourself in the past. And the difficulty is a bit high because there are no guarantees you won’t be pitted against an opponent who’s playing the perfect counter for you — tournament decks tend to be very specialized, very good at doing one specific thing and little else, greatly amplifying the inherent “rock-paper-scissors” feeling the game can have at its upper echelons. Especially in an environment that would normally feature things like deck bans and best-of-five rules — which is not the case for this Brawl, obviously.

So do keep in mind that it might take you a few runs to finally get that perfect game, and try to have fun while you give it a shot.

How to win the World Championship Tavern Brawl

There are the decks you can choose from (and keep in mind that any cards that have been nerfed since then are reverted to their original forms here):

• Face Hunter (Firebat, 2014)
• Patron Warrior (Ostkaka, 2015)
• Tempo Mage (Pavel, 2016)
• Jade Druid (Tom60229, 2017)
• Control Shaman (Hunterace, 2018)
• Inner Fire Priest (VKLiooon, 2019)
• Soul Demon Hunter (glory, 2020)
• Garrote Rogue (Posesi, 2021)
• Control Priest (Bunnyhoppor, 2022)
• Pure Paladin (PocketTrain, 2023)
• Starship Warlock (mlYanming, 2024)

Honestly, as much as the nostalgia aspect might make you want to pick classic archetypes like Patron Warrior or Jade Druid, your best bet to win this Brawl is to pick one of the newer decks.

Personally, I strongly recommend PocketTrain’s Pure Paladin as a deck that is both powerful and relatively easy to pilot: it’s a tempo-oriented midrange deck where you’ll be playing minions, buffing those minions, and using them both for good trades in your favor and to deal constant face damage. Your Divine Shields and your barrage of buffs will help a ton, and you have some good options to deal damage to the enemy board and control it.

mlYanming’s Starship Warlock is another good option, if you prefer a more control-oriented gameplay style. It borrows a lot of Death Knight Tourist cards with powerful Deathrattle effects that can bolster your Arkonite Defense Crystal — which is unnerfed here, by the way. All that armor plus the healing and value from your Felstring Harps will let you allow you to cruise straight to your powerful endgame.

And if you’re really into super-reactive Control decks, and not shy about just destroying everything the opponent puts on the board while keeping yourself healed until you outlast them (or kill them with boredom), then Bunnyhoppor’s Control Priest might be perfect for you! It’s exactly as I described: you have so many tools to clear the board that you might not even need to play those annoying Plaguespreaders and keep bringing them back — but you definitely can.

Personally, for the purposes of just trying to win this Brawl, I wouldn’t recommend that you pick the older decks unless you’re on the “just having fun” stage. I’d strongly recommend Pure Paladin for the easiest win, with Starship Warlock right behind, and Control Priest as another good option. But to each their own!

Remember the past, honor the past!

This is definitely a fun brawl, especially if you were an enthusiast of watching the World Championships in the olden days, when Hearthstone was still a new(-ish) game and we were all full of hope and wonder in our eyes. Moments like Firebat’s original win, Pavel’s “Pavelling Book,” one of the best games of Hearthstone we’ve ever seen in the semifinals between Ostkaka and Thijs, and VKLiooon’s celebrated, historical win have definitely stuck with us through the years, and this Brawl gives you an opportunity to reminisce.

So do reminisce, have fun, and hopefully get your pack with ease!