Hearthstone's high stakes Heroic Tavern Brawl is going Wild this week

A few months ago, Hearthstone unveiled the Heroic Tavern Brawl, transforming the usually-jovial weekly Tavern Brawl into a cutthroat, arena-like gauntlet with a $10 entry fee and the promise of massive prizes. A few of us tried it out and... it did not go well. 

This week, Heroic Tavern Brawl is back, but with a Wild twist. That is, instead of using the Standard format that is most common of competitive ranked play and tournaments, this week's Brawl will let players build decks using the entirety of Hearthstone's now rather expansive card library. 

This is the second instance in recent days of Blizzard showing some love to the Wild format. Over the weekend, the company announced that an official Wild tournament will be held sometime at the end of may.

As before, this Heroic Tavern Brawl has an entry fee of $9.99 or 1000 gold, and offers glorious riches for those who can complete the challenge. Similar to Hearthstone's Arena format, the goal is to secure 12 wins with a single deck, without losing three times. 

If you can make it all the way to the end of the 12-win road, the grand prize promises 50 Journey to Un'Goro card packs, three golden Legendary cards, and a pile of Arcane Dust and Gold. Of course, like Arena, you're matched up against players with a similar win/loss record as you, meaning the challenge gets progressively more difficult the more you win. 

The increased attention being given to Wild right now is interesting because for the first time the meta feels genuinely different now that so many sets have rotated out of Standard. Certainly it seems to have piqued the interest of a lot of pros and streamers who previously turned their noses up at the format. Perhaps it's time for us to venture in again and see if our Piloted Shredder PTSD has passed.