Hello Hearthstone [Free] players and welcome to another news and videos weekly roundup here at TouchArcade. I hope you've been enjoying your play and, hopefully, haven't been encountering too many Pirates along the way. This week we have some more talk on Gadgetzan and its effects, some interesting meta discussions, and, of course, some fun videos. I don't remember any other expansion creating so much talk post-release as Gadgetzan has, not so much in terms of intensity but in terms of how many different topics it seems to have generated. From talk about Pirates to discussions on Control decks to much more, this has been quite an interesting time for the game, hasn't it" Let's jump right in, then.

 
 
How Gadgetzan Changed Everything It's hard to deny Gadgetzan's impact on the game, and this story is all about that. The new cards have created new decks but have also created a reliance on certain archetypes, something most players aren't too happy about. In this interview, Peter Whalen, senior game designer, talks about how they're pleased to see Pirates doing well and seeing those cards in different decks, but they are keeping an eye on Patches and Small Time Buccaneer. The conversation then went into how 1-mana minions have been getting stronger and stronger, and while that matches the teams' philosophy, they are probably going to pull back a bit by making fewer powerful 1 drops, especially the kinds that snowball.

Arena came up next, with Whalen listing ...