This should've been this expansion's trailer
https://redd.it/1r5ldwg
@r_hearthstone
Which one are you taking?
https://redd.it/1r5jceg
@r_hearthstone
Leaked Demon Hunter Colossal?
https://redd.it/1r5g5qs
@r_hearthstone
Pyroblast with ∞ damage
https://redd.it/1r5dyfe
@r_hearthstone
Meet the potential class!
https://redd.it/1r5c2nf
@r_hearthstone
A rant about the frustrations of current arena
Played since TGT. This has to be the worst state I've ever seen arena specifically.
I can't even get passed 6 wins anymore lol. Skill issue? Probably...but man, I have to get some things off my chest:
\- 300 gold to play with almost no gold in return, bruh, I am not spending money on arena tickets lol. When my gold runs out, it's curtains.
\- All decks are basically the same. Synergy is forced. Ex. dragon warrior, rogue imbue, etc. It's so damn boring just to see and play the same things over and over...
\- Discover is out of control. Ex. opponent is priest, somehow got mage colossal minion and took out my board. Or the opposite, got full board on rogue, plays the 8 mana priest spell that kills everything lmao. Seriously, how do you play around anything when any class can generate anything?
\- Drafting after a loss is a mistake. You're again just forcing more synergy when area was always about picking low tier cards and making them work and occasionally pulling off a combo that would never work in constructed.
\- The game is too fast. This prob isn't an arena thing, but just in general. Every card just does multiple things and can have a monstrous impact on the board. If you don't have a card that does something immediately, you just lost.
Maybe this topic has been covered to death, but just wanted to get my experience out there. I don't play much anymore, so maybe everyone is okay with this sort of play. For me, it has been a jarring experience to say the least. It's really hard to stay engaged with the game when I don't feel like my plays really matter. Most of the time, I'm just crossing my fingers that the opponent didn't just discover an annoying ass counter to my board, which I know deep down, they did.
Damn.
https://redd.it/1r567aq
@r_hearthstone
This has to be the weirdest bug I've ever seen in Hearthstone.
https://redd.it/1r56cmd
@r_hearthstone
returning to hearthstone as a hunter main
https://redd.it/1r4vktv
@r_hearthstone
rotation. The lack of board clears that are non-damaged based means it becomes much harder to remove these stat stick Colossals. It does seem to be a late game oriented expansion, which ZachO doesn't mind. He is concerned about the non Deathwing classes though, especially since Priest and Mage are among them and need more help than any other class. Druid's standing in the meta looks sketchy without any true ramp, and Hunter and Paladin typically need to be powerful to see significant play unless they get a design hit like Discover Hunter. WorldEight is personally excited for the set because of Colossals, although he does admit the ones revealed so far look more boring. WorldEight thinks Deathwing's power level looks roughly similar to Brukan; a solid hero card but not anything too back breaking. WorldEight is more optimistic about Shatter than ZachO but does think Supply Run is a much more questionable card in Hunter than Flight Maneuvers is in Paladin. ZachO thinks both effects of Supply Run are unplayable in an aggressive Hunter deck. If no one is touching Aggro Paladin with Crusader's Aura, it's hard to imagine people want to play Aggro Paladin after rotation with Flight Maneuvers as a replacement for Crusader's Aura. Shatter cards being 4 mana for aggressive decks does not bode well, but ZachO says he's more encouraged by the Druid and Hunter Colossals being top end threats for aggressive decks with some prominent AoE being removed from Core. He does think it's going to be hard to evaluate the new cards because of what appears to be another big "power down" rotation.
The thing that stood out to ZachO the most with the big expansion reveal video this past week was the announcement that for the next 4 months everyone will get every card for Emerald Dream and Ungoro for free. To ZachO, that tells him how much Team 5 internally values these expansions. It's an admittance these expansions were complete trash garbage, and they don't want players dumping resources into these expansions because they know they were failures. He also hopes Team 5 expects Cataclysm to greatly outpower these expansions and therefore they don't mind giving out unimpactful cards for free. It is an admittance of failure they don't value these expansions. When F2P games like this start giving out these kinds of resources for free, it also suggests the game is struggling with player retention, causing the game to more aggressively try to bring back players or recruit new players to the game. You would never hand out these expansions for free if they were a success. It does suggest the game over the past year has struggled internally and now needs to entice players to come back. The game does seem to want to reference things that were popular in the past with this expansion (Colossals and the Invoke/Galakrond mechanic), and can be seen as an admission that Team 5 recognizes they've struggled with creating good new mechanics.
https://redd.it/1r4pqcn
@r_hearthstone
The world wouldn't have ended if these cards were buffed 6 months ago. It feels bad when cards are released in a dead state for over a year and when they're finally buffed into being viable, we can only play them for a month.
------------------
Blackhorn's Design - ZachO starts out by prefacing he's someone who can and has changed their mind on card design over the years. As of right now, he's an advocate of late game diversity. He thinks it's a good thing when classes have options to go late game through as many paths as possible. Late game diversity is enabled by options to create win conditions, and the inexistence of things that restrict those options and diversity. If there's a theoretical deck that can OTK you on turn 7 or 8 consistently, it forces other late game strategies to either find ways to pressure it or disrupt it before it can execute its win condition. Usually this can hurt late game diversity since a deck that wins on turn 11 gets hard counter by a deck that wins on turn 8. ZachO says he's not in favor of OTK decks that can execute their win condition consistently by turn 8 for those reasons. He doesn't care if OTK decks execute their win condition a couple turns later, because by that stage of the game even slower decks should have the time to properly pressure or execute their own win condition. In the current meta and prior to Blackhorn, Control Warrior vs Protoss Mage was a 50/50 matchup and Blood Control DK was a slight favorite against Protoss Mage, which is what you want. Protoss Mage isn't restricting late game diversity, so it's fine that it exists. Blackhorn accomplishes the opposite of that. What Blackhorn does is restrict the viability of any sort of late game win condition that is reliant on 0-2 mana cards. Blackhorn is not an "anti combo" card for control decks even if combo oriented decks do typically rely on those cards. There are multiple other decks that are also reliant on those cheap cards. Dead Man's Hand Warrior, Libram Paladin, and Aviana Priest are some examples of different types of decks hit hard by Blackhorn's existence. Aviana Priest in particular is a deck that isn't good, but is something that had a chance of being viable after rotation and now doesn't stand a chance because of how brutally hard Blackhorn hits that deck. Blackhorn is not a tech card against anti combo decks based on its performance, but instead a powerful win condition for any control deck that doesn't have its win condition deleted by its battlecry. ZachO says not only is Blackhorn not good for late game diversity, but it's highly discouraging for innovation. The psychological impact of playing a deck that has its win condition deleted by a single unconditional card as early as turn 7 makes players uninterested in exploring or innovating any potential avenues that are reliant on cards Blackhorn deletes. We have previously seen cards that can delete cards from your opponent's hand and/or deck, but these cards usually require a more strict deck building investment, resource investment, or time investment. ZachO mentions Boomboss as an example. It's a card that needed Brann to be effective as part of a win condition, which means you had to build your deck around Brann, invest resources to make it work, and you needed ample time to play those cards and have the effect go off. Boomboss would typically only be effective late in the game when the opponent's deck was already thinned out. Battle at the End Time is the most recent example; while the quest reward has an incredibly disruptive effect, it was printed to be only included in an incredibly weak deck because it had to be. ZachO brings up an old Twitter conversation with Iksar who once talked about "mean" cards. There are players that love to play "mean" cards and love to mess with the opponent. They don't just want to win a game of Hearthstone, they want to make their opponent suffer while doing so. Team 5 realizes this, and over the years they've made cards that appeal to these types of players. However, they've
Summary of the 2/14/2026 Vicious Syndicate Podcast (First one after the 34.6 patch)
Listen to the most recent Vicious Syndicate podcast here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-214/
Read the most recent VS Report here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-343/
As always, glad to do these summaries, but a summary won't be able to cover everything and can miss nuances, so I highly recommend listening to their podcast as well. The next VS report will come out Thursday, February 19th, with the next podcast coming TBD.
-----
Blackhorn's Meta Impact - This card has already made a large impact on the format with its inclusion in Control Warrior and Blood Control DK. Most of the card's attention has been in Control Warrior, which spiked in play everywhere on ladder, but especially at Top Legend. Blackhorn has dramatically shifted some of Control Warrior's matchups with the biggest impact being on the Discover Hunter matchup. While Control Warrior was previously a slight favorite against the deck, Blackhorn has caused the deck's winrate to go up another 8% in that matchup and is now a strong counter. This has caused Discover Hunter to completely fade. Last week Discover Hunter had a near 20% playrate at Top Legend, and that has now crashed to around 2.5%. Discover Hunter's performance has also nosedived as a result of Blackhorn and Control Warrior's popularity, going from a borderline Tier 1 deck to a Tier 3 one. The Blood Control DK matchup against Discover Hunter has also shifted a few percentage points in DK's favor making it a favorite. ZachO says while Blackhorn's focus has been its utilization in Warrior, it's an even stronger card in Blood Control DK. It is a core card in both archetypes based on the data and looks significantly more powerful than a typical tech card. Blackhorn looks like an inclusion in every control deck that doesn't have its win condition deleted by Blackhorn. Blackhorn is not a niche card in its effectiveness; it's strong against a variety of different classes including Rogue and Mage. Ironically the card isn't effective against Broxigar DH if the deck drops Brewmasters and no longer relies on the Broxigar wincon. Instead, you shove in more threats like Illidari Inquisitor on top of your Elise location. Broxigar DH is favored against Control Warrior and Blood Control DK despite them running Blackhorn. Broxigar DH's performance is also being propped up by its main counter in Discover Hunter being erased from the format. There is no check on Broxigar DH right now and the deck looks out of control everywhere on ladder including Top Legend. As of right now, the deck has a 56%(!) winrate at Top Legend. ZachO cautions part of this is due to the amount of unrefined decks people are playing right now after the buff patch, but it is alarming at Top Legend where much fewer people are running Whizbang. Even in a refined format, Broxigar DH looks unstoppable. According to ZachO, Blackhorn has unbalanced the format by invalidating Discover Hunter as a meta deck, and that's the main meta dynamic shift that has occurred since the patch.
Whizbang - While Whizbang is in Tier 4 territory, the buffs successfully made it a high Tier 4 deck. There are some large performance variances between the Whizbang decks. The Whizbang DK deck is a Tier 1 deck and is now the best Whizbang deck over Warlock after the buffs. Whizbang Hunter is also one of the stronger ones. However, most Whizbang decks are fairly bad, specifically the DH, Druid, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, and Warrior ones. A lot of people are playing Whizbang after the buffs, with a playrate near 20% at some rank brackets.
Maestra Rogue - Maestra Rogue has seen a lot of experimentation, but the deck's performance is worse than the Imbue variant of Elise Rogue. ZachO can't recommend the deck at any level of play for climbing ladder and doesn't think there's much you can alter to its decklist to improve it. It is especially terrible against Broxigar DH. Rogue decks are also being
Beautiful Best is not a beast
https://redd.it/1r4j60r
@r_hearthstone
New Keyword: Shatter!
New Expansion! New Keyword!!
Shatter, how does it work? When a Shatter card enters your hand from anywhere, it will SHATTER into two halves. The first half will enter the far-left side of your hand (card A). The second half will enter on the far-right side (card B).
https://preview.redd.it/c4kmpl9qviig1.png?width=1377&format=png&auto=webp&s=e925ae47394e74d5d07cc1265e9358bdbb0a88da
If your hand full, the whole card will be burned. No Shattering happens.
If you have one card fewer than a full hand, you will only get the card on the left (card A).
Once the two halves touch, the card will be recombined. This is very similar to Xor’toth’s stars. The recombined card will appear in the middle of where the two cards touched, forcing you to play the recombined card before it will be possible to play the next Shattered card waiting to combine.
When Shatter cards recombine, they will also combine their buffs. For example, if card A has spell damage +1 and card B has costs (1) less, the combined card will have both spell damage +1 and costs (1) less.
If you “draw a card and reduce it’s cost by (1)” on a Shatter card BEFORE it’s been Shattered, both haves will cost (1) less. Once the two halves combine, the combined card will cost (2) less.
After you combine a Shattered card, the combined card will be glued together forever. If you shuffle the combined card back into your deck and then draw it again, it will still be combined, it will not re-Shatter. If you add a copy of a Shattered card (that has already been combined) into your hand, it will not Shatter again.
When your opponent draws a Shattered card, it will be… very obvious. They will get an extra card in their hand, and both halves will glow red. There will be a history tile that shows you that your opponent Shattered a card when they do so, but you will not know what the original Shattered card looked like. (it will look similar to when an opponent forges a card, or plays a secret). You only know what Shatter card it is once it's been played.
If you have any more questions about Shatter, don’t hesitate to ask below!
Edit:
If you Shatter two different Flight Maneuvers, card A from the first Flight Maneuvers can combine with card B from the second Flight Meneuvers, if they some how meet in your hand. The halves of Supply Run and Flight Maneuvers will NOT interact. Card A from the first Flight Maneuvers will NOT combine with card A from the second Flight Meneuvers.
Once a Shatter card is combined, the Shatter keyword is removed (like Twinspell).
If you play Sheldras Moontree, and make a Shatter card "Cast When Drawn", it will cast the combined card before it gets a chance to Shatter in your hand.
DEATHWING IS COMING! PREPARE YOURSELF! YOUR WOLD WILL ~~BREAK~~ SHATTER!
https://redd.it/1r0e5uz
@r_hearthstone
Upcoming Nerf ?
https://redd.it/1r0778w
@r_hearthstone
I got infinite imbue rng rouge combo
https://redd.it/1qzxjfk
@r_hearthstone
🚨 BREAKING: Blizzard Reveals All Cards From the New Expansion in an Effort to Show Their Commitment to Transparency 🚨
https://redd.it/1r5mgzl
@r_hearthstone
It seems I received a quest from this sub
https://redd.it/1r5fy75
@r_hearthstone
Mage in Catclysm
https://redd.it/1r5erv6
@r_hearthstone
Some things NEVER change...
https://redd.it/1r5crjr
@r_hearthstone
So, Blizzard Team 5 is continuing to stay silent about Twist in 2026 and the Year of Scarab?
Anyone knows?
I mean, the game director Tyler Bielman and his sidekick Nathan Lyons-Smith elusively appeared to speak very briefly in a recent 17-minutes video regarding Hearthstone's upcoming year, but both head honchos and actually the entire video omitted to mention anything whatsoever on modes like Arena and Twist.
I am further convinced Team 5 has no vision at all for these modes, or perhaps their "vision" is to do nothing and let the respective modes rot as it currently is?
In the case of Twist, it literally has been unplayable for way too long. Can anyone even remind me when was the last time there was an active Twist season? I genuinely cannot even remember.
https://redd.it/1r58473
@r_hearthstone
Reached Legend for the first time after many breaks from Hearthstone!
https://redd.it/1r52e2f
@r_hearthstone
Here's your colossals
https://redd.it/1r55npt
@r_hearthstone
How it Started and How it's Going....
https://redd.it/1r4p8rl
@r_hearthstone
intentionally made these kinds of cards weaker because there was a cognizant recognition that if these cards are powerful and meta defining, they are not fun for the game. A 7 mana OTK that invalidates your entire deck might not be fun, but an unconditional 7 mana 6/6 invalidating the other player's deck is also not fun.
If you’re unsure if Blackhorn is good design, you just need to ask yourself two questions: if it encourages late game diversity, and if it creates more interesting gameplay. The answer to both is no. ZachO says Blackhorn is a strong candidate to be one of the worst designed cards the game has ever seen, and time will prove that it was a complete design disaster to ever let the card be released into the client. There's no interesting gameplay or innovation that can be produced from this card. For people who say control needs an answer to combo, ZachO says he agrees OTKs shouldn't happen on turn 8, but if they're happening on turn 12 then they can exist without needing Blackhorn to stop it. In the current format there are no spooky OTKs you need to worry about. Broxigar is losing Brewmaster after rotation, and Team 5 is already taking every measure to ensure there's no fast win condition that's burst reliant that can restrict control decks. If a fast OTK does pop up, then nerf it, you don't need Blackhorn to stop them. Are we really happy that Blackhorn is going to restrict decks for 2 years to not utilize 0-2 mana cards in their late game? Even if Blackhorn isn't optimal in a Control Warrior or DK deck after rotation, people have been playing bad tech cards like Librarian and Demolition Renovator all year. There's no way they will stop playing Blackhorn that has a much wider reaching impact. WorldEight agrees with everything ZachO says. He thinks the design team looked at Skulking Geist and wanted to do a more "Legendary" version of that disruption, but that doesn't mean Skulking Geist was great design in the first place. ZachO agrees Geist was a bandaid to give players an answer to Jade Druid, but Blackhorn is so much more powerful than Geist ever was. It hits the new Deathwing cataclysm effect that shuffles 1 mana Legendary dragons into your deck, which means it could already be mandatory in Deathwing mirrors. Even the slowest Rogue deck with the most value oriented cards get warped by Blackhorn because of how reliant the class is on cheap cards.
Cataclysm Discussion - Colossals are returning, but with a spin in 6 classes with the Herald mechanic being an Invoke type upgrade for them and Deathwing. The classes that don't have access to the Herald mechanic are getting Colossals that are more standalone stat bombs. It seems like they're hinting the Herald classes will be more late game oriented while the non Herald classes will be more aggressively slanted based off the Hunter and Druid Colossals. Shatter cards are being given to the non Herald classes, but ZachO thinks these classes got screwed over because of how bad the mechanic seems to be. While the pre shattered version of these cards are powerful, trying to get the cards to merge seems impossible to do outside of being in low curve decks. This further supports ZachO's theory that the Shatter classes are meant to be aggressively slanted (sorry Priest players). As of right now, aggressive decks are nonexistent so it remains to be seen if they can actually print significant aggressive support to make them viable, especially considering the lackluster support the last year of design has given aggro decks. ZachO says it's hard to evaluate Deathwing. It seems like a reasonable hero card with reasonable effects, and the hero power is essentially a Foamrender so it has some ability to close out game. The Colossals themselves seem like the things that will be primary win conditions going off of Ragnaros. While it might be a Disneyland strategy, a fully upgraded Ragnaros and Deios on 15 mana will do 64 damage. ZachO thinks the Druid and Hunter Colossals are an indication as to why Corpse Explosion and Brawl were removed in
negatively impacted by Blackhorn due to their abundance of cheap cards.
Arkwing Mage - Arkwing Mage got a couple of big buffs, and as a result the deck looks solid and competitive everywhere on ladder. The deck runs Raylla with the Paladin drunk package, and Divine Brew is used to activate your Arkwing spellburst. This is the best new deck that has been birthed by the buff patch, and ZachO says he's sad this buff wasn't done much earlier considering how much Mage has been struggling over the last year. WorldEight mentions a Skyla variant of Arkwing Mage. ZachO initially says it doesn't look like there's a reason to run it over the Raylla one, but glancing further at play data he mentions it looks like the Skyla variant is split between 2 different versions and may possibly be viable. There is a Skyla variant that runs a high Elise slop curve with Snatch and Grab, and that version doesn't look good. Over the last 12 hours, a variant that tops out with Tsunami looks better. He still thinks the Raylla variant is the best performing one as of now because it requires less setup. Arkwing Mage is specifically not good against Warrior and Death Knight in part due to Blackhorn, but it's good against other things. It farms Rogue and has a manageable matchup against DH.
Abduction Warlock/Wallow Warlock - D0nkey propagated a new Abduction Ray Warlock which Jambre made further popular. You play Abduction Ray with Foreboding Flame (the 2 mana 2/3 that discounts your generated Demons by 1 for the entire game). It's a very low curve deck, and while some lists run the newly buffed Archimonde, ZachO's not sure if it's optimal in the deck. Ticking Pylon Zilliax is very important for the deck because of how low to the ground the deck is. You run Entropic Continuity solely because it's a 1 mana board buff for a deck that can go wide quickly. The deck looks fine, but it's not great (Tier 3-ish) and will fall off at higher levels of play when you run into more Control Warrior/DK. People are also experimenting with Wallow Warlock alongside the Abduction Ray and Archimonde buffs. The deck also looks serviceable at lower ranks, certainly an improvement for the archetype.
Libram Paladin - The deck looks solid primarily at lower ranks, but it is worse than Aura Paladin. The buffs did positively impact the deck to the point it now looks like a viable deck to climb to Legend with. Like Aura Paladin, it will fall off at higher levels of play. It is also a deck that gets negatively impacted against Blackhorn.
New meta overall - The buffs were successful at introducing multiple new strategies into the format, although you likely won't see much of these at higher levels of play. Broxigar DH's performance is choking out the format, and the popularity spike of Control Warrior is discouraging any of the decks it counters from seeing play. Control Warrior is roughly a Tier 2 performer with Blood Control DK looking like a slightly better deck with a borderline Tier 1 performance. If you want to climb ladder with no effort, play Broxigar DH without Brewmasters. Every deck that Blackhorn impacts got worse after the patch. WorldEight praises the buff patch and is happy with some of the buffs to cards that aren't seeing a lot of play currently. He's been experimenting with Crewmate DH and says Emergency Meeting is a much better card at 1 mana and is baffled why it wasn't printed at that cost. ZachO says he's frustrated why these buffs weren't done sooner, and WorldEight wholeheartedly agrees. Libram Paladin and Arkwing Mage could have been made competitive months ago with these buffs without negatively impacting the format. This is living proof that buffs work and help create diversity within classes. These were not high risk buffs and didn't need to be done 1 month before these cards rotated. Team 5 still seems very risk adverse when it comes to balance. ZachO says it's hard for him to praise Team 5 for this patch because he feels like they're only doing these buff patches if they feel there's 0 risk involved.
New Mage Colossal be like
https://redd.it/1r4ncy7
@r_hearthstone
New and Returning Player Weekly Discussion
This weekly discussion is designed so that everybody may ask any and all questions regarding the game's mechanics, decks, strategies, and more.
Are you an experienced player, or have you picked up some knowledge along the way? Please help out by offering your opinions and best answers!
Please keep it clean and add more than just a one or two word response. Keep in mind not everything will have a 'best' answer.
Check out our wiki for answers to some common questions and links to terrific community resources about deck ideas, card info, and news!
See previous week's discussions.
https://redd.it/1r0qo44
@r_hearthstone
The Cataclysmic Prerelease Reveal Thread - All currently known cards for the new expansion, updated daily
Cataclysm - Release Date 3\/17
2͟/͟9
Warmaster Blackhorn \- Neutral legendary minion, free on login
Ebyssian \- Hunter legendary minion
Deathwing, Worldbreaker \- Multi-class legendary hero card for 'Herald' classes, Rogue, DK, Warrior, Warlock, Shaman, Demon Hunter
Ragnaros, the Great Fire \- Warrior legendary colossal minion
Victor Nefarius \- Death Knight legendary minion
Supply Run \- Hunter common spell
Battlefield Blaster \- Neutral common minion
Flight Maneuvers \- Paladin epic spell
Chamber of Aspects \- Druid common location
Chromatus \- Paladin Legendary Colossal minion
~~------------------~~
Upcoming card reveals
New and returning keywords!
Shatter \- When you draw a card, it splits into two pieces in the opposite sides of your hand. If they are brought together, they combine into one effect!
Colossal - These cards summon extra synergistic minions alongside them.
Herald \- Each Herald card increases the power of your class's colossal minion (and the Deathwing Hero card). Additionally, it will summon one of the appendages of your class's colossal minion.
https://redd.it/1r0g10k
@r_hearthstone
This game can be so funny sometimes.
https://redd.it/1r022f7
@r_hearthstone
I usually despise tech cards but this is the meta we are in now
https://redd.it/1qzp1i6
@r_hearthstone
