If you haven’t heard yet, a new Hearthstone expansion is coming out that revolves around the Lich King. Tempo Storm partnered up with Blizzard to do a website takeover, and we rebranded to The Frozen Pwn. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you may have noticed that we held a special Fireside Gathering named the “Frostside Gathering,” and the festivities are still continuing.

Blizzard allows community members (esports teams, streamers, broadcast personalities, etc.) to reveal new cards, and Tempo Storm as an esports franchise was able to claim one for our own (rather than specifically having some of our players do it). Most card reveals end up just being very simple and straightforward – people either write an article or make a YouTube video sharing the card. We decided to do things a bit differently.

For our card – Thrall, Deathseer – we decided to integrate it straight into the Hearthstone Standard Meta Snapshot. It was protected under a non-disclosure agreement, so after being told what was going on, from that point, this was mostly a solo mission.

https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/decks/freeze-evolve-shaman-standard-meta-snapshot-july-31-2017

Here’s a small excerpt:

The Lich King was dissatisfied with all the decks with sub-100% win rates, so he decided to construct his own. After using his great, brilliant mind to craft a fully legal Standard deck (and I promise that the Lich King is definitely, absolutely not standing behind my shoulder right now forcing me to write this), he’s gone undefeated until #1 Legend, which is why we are featuring this deck at Tier S.

At the moment, there are no decks that stand a chance against Freeze Evolve Shaman. The popular aggro decks are unable to push for damage, as they are constantly frozen. Before long, the Shaman develops enough minions and tokens to evolve into an unstoppable board, retaliating with enough face damage for OTKs.

The control decks are unable to outlast the Shaman’s endless stream of evolved resources. Responding with minions results in getting frozen, while trying to use area-of-effect board clears in response to the Shaman’s army results in being Counterspelled.

It is clear that the reason for this deck’s strength is its hybridization with Mage, as well as the extremely powerful new Shaman hero, Thrall, Deathseer. Essentially giving you unlimited evolutions, opponents are put into a kill-now-or-never-kill situation – attempting to kill the Shaman’s minions over multiple turns is impossible, as Transmute Spirit is able to effectively heal a minion back to full health.

We can only hope that deck hybridization becomes a thing for lists not only created by the Lich King, so competitive decks can be created again by commoners. Otherwise, this deck is going to remain dominant for ages to come.

Basically, we tweaked our deck building system so I could create a deck with the new card. I also made it a hybrid deck of both Shaman and Mage cards, just in case people actually thought we weren’t joking (even though the 100% win rates and the all-caps archetype explanation sort of gives it away).

Mango the Yorkshire Terrier went on an adventure yesterday to the Tempo Storm Hearthstone Frostside Gathering, a rebranded Fireside Gathering in San Diego, CA in celebration of the new, upcoming Hearthstone expansion involving the Lich King.

Because I am part of Tempo Storm, we got there a little earlier than everyone else so we could get settled and help set up when needed. reynad, the founder and CEO of Tempo Storm, and his girlfriend Michaela were there as well; Michaela wanted to put sunglasses on Mango.

Frodan, one of the co-founders of Tempo Storm and currently a Hearthstone caster and broadcast personality, dressed up as Gul’dan. Here he is calmly petting Mango as he gazes off into the distance, plotting his next world takeover and domination.

Jessica Nigri, world-famous cosplayer and personality, was also at the event. She absolutely adored Mango and held him for about half an hour or so.

FakeNerdBoy, Jessica Nigri’s boyfriend and a broadcaster, also held Mango for a little while.

The event itself wasn’t really that great for me, seeing as I don’t really like parties, but Ed is still over in California visiting from Illinois, and he seemed to enjoy it. I don’t drink alcohol, but Ed does, so he got some free drinks and roamed around enjoying the event. We stayed for around six hours; this photo of Ed is from shortly before we were about to leave:

I was the one who ended up driving from Riverside County to San Diego. It’s right around a hundred miles in each direction, and I thought the drive there would be awful (because I hate driving), but it actually wasn’t that bad. What was bad, however, was trying to find parking in San Diego.

After proceeding to fail at finding an open spot for a good 20 minutes or so, we finally made our way into a parking garage and found a spot. On our way out, I discovered that parking cost … US$60.00. I guess owning a multi-floor parking structure in San Diego is good business.

A whole lot of people were complaining on social media about how this Hearthstone event was taking place at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, and how distracting it would be … but it actually ended up just fine. I got to meet up with some of my buddies from Tempo Storm, and even got to enjoy a nice … wait, what even is this?

If you guessed “mold,” you would be correct. This was my first time trying blue cheese, and I was a little bit confused when I received my burger and it smelled distinctly moldy. The only reason I ordered it is because I had never had it before, and I like trying new items on the menu … but I didn’t exactly look it up first to see what I would be getting.

In other news, one of my co-workers with whom I met up at the event has nearly THIRTY THREE THOUSAND unread emails. It was so mind-boggling to me, as I always use my inbox as a to-do list and archive emails after I’m done addressing them, that I snapped a photo of her Mail app.

And finally, remember how, back during our Fireside Festival, I saw Hyped, a professional Overwatch player for Immortals, and proceeded to take a photograph together with him so I could tweet at Baemax (his girlfriend) and say “hey look who I found”?

Well, I got to do it again today, except in reverse.