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Hearthstone: The Grand Tournament - A grand expansion's out

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Hearthstone: The Grand Tournament - A grand expansion's out

How to go about reviewing an expansion is always a vexing question.

Especially one like The Grand Tournament where many players will pick up the cards, piecemeal, for free. Where they'll have no choice over whether what they get is useful, or useless.

Here at Pocket Gamer we're always up for a challenge, though. So let's try.

One angle to take is to focus on sheer impact. The amount by which the new material transforms the game.

Goblins vs Gnomes, the last new card pack set for Hearthstone was a great success in this regard. It added more randomness and deck styles, both good things.

The Grand Tournament looks at first to be even more ambitious. It's the first expansion to add new mechanics to the game. And the focus on hero powers targets the only element that didn't get a tweak in previous expansions.

Transforming

After playing with the cards for a week, however, it doesn't feel like much of a shake up at all. The meta surrounding the game seems just the same as always, with a few new effects in circulation.

This is mostly because those new mechanics haven't turned out to be quite as exciting as they sounded.

Jousts are the main offender. They're effects that only trigger if the owning player draws a random card with a higher mana cost than their opponent. Unreliable powers are of dubious value in Hearthstone.

For Jousts to work reliably, you need to be playing a high-cost control deck against an aggressive deck full of cheap cards. That's too situational to be useful.

A couple of Joust cards, like Tuskarr Jouster, which fits well into the Paladin control archetype, look to have lasting value. Overall though, it looks to be a damp squib.

The other new addition, the Inspire keyword, is turning out to be more fun. These are effects that trigger each time you use your hero power.

There are several powerful Inspire cards doing the rounds and some new deck archetypes for Mage, Paladin, and Shaman that make good use of it.

While good, it hasn't turned out to be as groundbreaking as many expected. Hero powers offer less bang for the mana cost than card play does, so it's often not the best choice, even with Inspire.

Plus, you need a lot of Taunt out to protect your Inspire cards long enough to get good use out of them.

Extending

However, looking at total shake-up value isn't the only way of assessing an expansion. Some new game additions don't aim to transform a title.

They have ambitions which are more modest but, arguably, of more important and lasting value. They aim to simply fix up and improve an already great game.

The Grand Tournament is shaping up to be one such set.

When you look closely at the best cards and the new mechanics, it becomes apparent that Blizzard had several targets for this expansion.

One is the dominance of aggro decks. They're cheap, effective, and easy to use, and so dominate the lower ranks of ladder play. While they work, they're not much fun to play against.

They create short, boring matches where one or both players do nothing but smash their opponent in the face.

Joust and Inspire both slow the game down, which is bad for aggro decks. There are also individual cards like Dalaran Aspirant and Tuskarr Totemic that help slower decks gain early board presence. Suddenly, it's risky just to go for the face every turn.

Nudging

The expansion as a whole seems to be about smoothing and rebalancing the game. Making sure that all classes and player styles can come together and have fun on an equal footing.

The concept of minion types gets a makeover. No longer is "Murloc" the only keyword worth searching for. Now totem, silver hand, pirate, and dragon decks are all viable and variable.

Speaking of totems some of the weaker classes get a new lease of life, especially the Shaman.

So, The Grand Tournament isn't ripping up the Hearthstone rulebook and starting again. It's about making the game better for everyone.

By that measure it succeeds admirably. And it'll have a more subtle and enduring impact as a result.

Hearthstone: The Grand Tournament - A grand expansion's out

It won't transform your decks, but it does open up a wide range of mouth-watering new options
Score
Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower
Matt is a freelance arranger of words concerning boardgames and video games. He's appeared on IGN, PC Gamer, Gamezebo, and others.